

Rook 3 i^7 3 s 

f 

I 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 





1 









%^f 






f. 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS 


r Vv 


. - 1 * >’• 

. ..f, 

V ; ■ 

■S -Vf--,-' 


((fl' ■ 


.J' > * •- •• ■' • 

‘v’; ' 







K, -. 




fiV*: 

-%'j 










'j 




[■^:-^< \* ■ .'-m 

r * s A * *T^ 


¥»• ■j'’ ''?! • 


wsm iJbi^ -2-^ *« 


ir ‘ :* vt 






m 





^ *♦ 


I 

^ ■ ?A"vi-v ‘“i 




l! - 


W: 


1 ;i ? ••' • 

-^ - l -X 
[|^ 

* "’< '**14 * 

:.f^ '^■- ‘t^,. • : cr ’ ■" 

•■ ▲ 7' 





r ^ '^. ‘ . i» ^ ^ • I ■ * 

■? /*^A^ 

_ wt <^ / ^ >■ ^ V^f - ^ 

^vv ' rr^i v:|iP »>!?>' Si 

• ;/.>3 


f » 


;»■•*- “ ' a' - 'l ’■ ''“’a. . %-■''■'•?.■' ;2'’'i 

Fg. ig‘i J*- 'IV... -2*r..- ■• ■" : 


f ' . .V*Fr ^ .».’*■ 


. » 



I* •. 


IS. 


u* 






>. 


A 


’/• 


> t .* 


» 5 


'.4 »• 


. r 


^ “T 

• • • 4 


Sfe.- 


■' ' ‘-iS * ' 'V * 

■i - . 


S' p . i 

■.<r^. 'I ,. 










J<3G- 


* Aft 

\ Cm 

/ V ’.j;*’ 'Tst 




'■ 1 XCi a - ' ‘^-^ 

■ ...■ J ■- . ,.Jfcl. 


I J 


ij^4 


I .*: t 


fW 




\y 




wM- 






St 


-rj 


« 




t> . 


:i*4i^5 


'.j^ 




Av 


y 




ly** 








«'■' .'*♦ '* 

' T'r ^ M 


rr^' :-*L " 




.QDL= 

II ^T'; 


.j . 


'■.‘itt 


'''^■ 






’. . • • '‘J 


a'.m I 






. ' r 


4, l-V 


■'■ *' 


►, ' t 


.<^1 if 

k ■ • 



iT'i t-y ' *' 


9 


* !<!i' 


\ 


rw 


-J .' 


\>V'“ . '- iC ‘-’ A“>j 

'i'i. . .■ ,^ , .; 







1 ‘ 


•7^ ’ % ^‘' ., .iSSliA » *4i.»i .1 J(.' 




AS'.ir 


k A 


*‘J| * . * » * . 


• j: 


xi'' ^ ♦ 






iC 


w 


HAT think you 

* 

noWy Tohomish?’’'’ 




THE BRIDGE 
OF THE GODS 


A Romance of Indian Oregon 

B y B A L C H 



oEVENTH EDITION 
IVith eight full-page illustrations by 

L. Maynard Dixon 



CHICAGO * A. C. McCLURG ^ CO. 

NINETEEN HUNDRED ^ TWO 





T^rXl'BRARV OF 

CONGRESS. 
Co«M Reccivco 

AUG. II 1902 

CO^VWaWT ENTMv 
DLASB^^ XXo. NO. 

I’iiTus 

CORY B. 


Copyright 

A. C. McClurg & Co. 

1890 AND 1902 


PZ3 



Published, August 2, 1902 








> *• 


f 


I 


•f 

. t' > 

i J' 


PUBLISHERS’ NOTE 


E ncouraged by the steady demand for Mr. Balch’s 
“ The Bridge of the Gods,” since its publication 
twelve years ago, the publishers have decided to issue a 
new edition beautified with drawings from the pencil of 
Mr. L. Maynard Dixon. This tale of the Indians of the 
far West has fairly earned its lasting popularity, not only 
by the intense interest of the story, but by its faithful 
delineations of Indian character. 

In his boyhood Mr. Balch enjoyed exceptional oppor- 
tunities to inform himself regarding the character and 
manners of the Indians : he visited them in their homes, 
watched their industries, heard their legends, saw their 
gambling games, listened to their conversation ; he ques- 
tioned the Indians and the white pioneers, and he read 
many books for information on Indian history, traditions, 
and legends. By personal inquiry among old natives he 
learned that the Bridge which suggested the title of his 
romance was nc? fabric of the imagination, but was a great 
natural bridge that in early days spanned the Columbia, 
and later, according to tradition, was destroyed by an 
earthquake. 

Before his death the author had the satisfaction of 
knowing that his work was stamped with the approval of 
the press and the public ; his satisfaction would have 
been more complete could he have foreseen that that 
approval would be so lasting. 


July i, 1902. 




PREFACE. 


I N attempting to present with romantic setting a 
truthful and realistic picture of the powerful and 
picturesque Indian tribes that inhabited the Oregon 
country two centuries ago, the author could not be 
indifferent to the many serious difficulties inseparable 
from such an enterprise. Of the literary success with 
which his work has been accomplished, he must of course 
leave others to judge; but he may without immodesty 
speak briefly of his preparation for his task, and of the 
foundation of some of the facts and legends which form 
the framework of his story. Indian life and character 
have long been a favorite study with him, and in these 
pages he has attempted to describe them, not from an 
ideal standpoint, but as he knew them in his own boy- 
hood on the Upper Columbia. Many of the incidents 
related in the story have come under his personal obser- 
vation ; others have been told him by aged pioneers, or 
gleaned from old books of Northwestern travel. The 
every-day life of the Indians, their food, their dress, their 
methods of making their mats, of building their houses, 
of shaping their canoes, their gambling games, their re- 
ligious beliefs, their legends, their subjects of conversa- 
tion, the sports and pastimes of their children, — all these 
have been studied at first hand, and with the advantages 
of familiar and friendly intercourse with these people in 
their own homes. By constant questioning, many facts 


Vlll 


PREFACE. 


have been gained regarding their ancestry, and the frag- 
ments of history, tradition, and legend that have come 
down from them. Indian antiquities have been studied 
through every available source of information. All the 
antiquarian collections in Oregon and California have 
been consulted, old trading-posts visited, and old pioneers 
and early missionaries conversed with. Nothing has been 
discarded as trivial or insignificant that could aid in the 
slightest degree in affording an insight into Indian char- 
acter and customs of a by-gone age. 

As to the great Confederacy of the Wauna, it may 
be said that Gray’s “ History of Oregon ” tells us of an 
alliance of several tribes on the Upper Columbia for mu- 
tual protection and defence; and students of Northwest- 
ern history will recall the great confederacy that the 
Yakima war-chief Kamyakin formed against the whites 
in the war of 1856, when the Indian tribes were in revolt 
from the British Possessions to the California line. 
Signal-fires announcing war against the whites leaped 
from hill to hill, flashing out in the night, till the line of 
fire beginning at the wild Okanogan ended a thousand 
miles south, on the foot-hills of Mount Shasta. Knowing 
such a confederacy as this to be an historical fact, there 
seems nothing improbable in that part of the legend 
which tells us that in ancient times the Indian tribes 
on either side of the Cascade Range united under the 
great war-chief Multnomah against their hereditary foes 
the Shoshones. Even this would not be so extensive a 
confederacy as that which Kamyakin formed a hundred 
and fifty years later. 

It may be asked if there was ever a great natural bridge 
over the Columbia, — a “ Bridge of the Gods,” such as the 
legend describes. The answer is emphatically, “Yes.” 
Everywhere along the mid-Columbia the Indians tell of 
a great bridge that once spanned the river where the 
cascades now are, but where at that time the placid 


PREFACE. 


IX 


current flowed under an arch of stone ; that this bridge 
was tomanowos., built by the gods ; that the Great Spirit 
shook the earth, and the bridge crashed down into the 
river, forming the present obstruction of the cascades. 
All of the Columbian tribes tell this story, in different 
versions and in different dialects, but all agreeing upon 
its essential features as one of the great facts of their 
past history. 

Ancutta (long time back),” say the Tumwater In- 
dians, “the salmon he no pass Tumwater falls. It too 
much big leap. Snake Indian he no catch um fish 
above falls. By and by great tomanowos bridge at 
cascades he fall in, dam up water, make river higher all 
way up to Tumwater; then salmon he get over. Then 
Snake Indian all time catch um plenty.” 

“ My father talk one time,” said an old Klickitat to a 
pioneer at White Salmon, Washington; “long time ago 
liddle boy, him in canoe, his mother paddle, paddle up 
Columbia, then come to tomanowos bridge. Squaw pad- 
dle canoe under ; all dark under bridge. He look up, all 
like one big roof, shut out sky, no see um sun. Indian 
afraid, paddle quick, get past soon, no good. Liddle 
boy no forget how bridge look.” 

Local proof also is not wanting. In the fall, when the 
freshets are over and the waters of the Columbia are 
clear, one going out in a small boat just above the cas- 
cades and looking down into the transparent depths can 
see submerged forest trees beneath him, still standing 
upright as they stood before the bridge fell in and the 
river was raised above them. It is a strange, weird sight, 
this forest beneath the river; the waters wash over the 
broken tree-tops, fish swim among the leafless branches ; 
it is desolate, spectre-like, beyond all words. Scientific 
men who have examined the field with a view to deter- 
mining the credibility of the legend about the bridge are 
convinced that it is essentially true. Believed in by many 


X 


PREFACE. 


tribes, attested by the appearance of the locality, and 
confirmed by geological investigation, it is surely entitled 
to be received as a historic fact. 

The shipwreck of an Oriental vessel on the Oregon 
coast, which furnishes one of the most romantic elements 
in our story, is an altogether probable historic incident, as 
explained more fully in a foot-note on page 75. 

The spelling of Indian names, in which authorities differ 
so widely, has been made as accurate as possible ; and, 
as in the name “ Wallulah,” the oldest and most Indian- 
like form has been chosen. An exception has been made 
in the case of the modernized and corrupted “ Willamette,” 
which is used instead of the original Indian name, “Walla- 
met.” But the meaningless “ Willamette ” has unfortu- 
nately passed into such general use that one is almost 
compelled to accept it. Another verbal irregularity should 
be noticed: Wauna, the name given by all the Indians in 
the story to the Columbia, was only the Klickitat name for 
it. The Indians had no general name for the Columbia, 
but each tribe had a special name, if any, for it. Some 
had no name for it at all. It was simply “the big water,” 
river,” “the big salmon water.” What Wauna, the 
Klickitat name, or Wemath, the Wasco name, signifies, 
the author has been unable to learn, even from the In- 
dians who gave him the names. They do not know; 
they say their fathers knew, but it is forgotten now. 

A rich and splendid treasure of legend and lore has 
passed away with the old pioneers and the Indians of the 
earlier generation. All that may be found interesting 
in this or any other book on the Indians, compared to 
what has been lost, is like “a tom leaf from some old 
romance.” 


Oakland, California, 
September, 1890. 


F. H. B. 


CONTENTS 


33 ook I. 

THE APOSTLE TO THE INDIANS. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The New England Meeting 13 

II. The Minister’s Home 21 

III. A Darkened Fireside 31 

IV. The Council of Ordination 39 

V. Into Trackless Wilds 47 

230 ok II. 

THE OPENING OF THE DRAMA. 

I. Shall the Great Council be Held? . 53 

II. The War-Chief and the Seer .... 69 

III. Wallulah 74 

IV. Sending out the Runners 87 

33 o 0 k III. 

THE GATHERING OF THE TRIBES. 

I. The Broken Peace-Pipe 91 

II. On the Way to the Council .... 103 

III. The Great Camp on the Island ... 120 

IV. An Indian Trial 131 

V. Sentenced to the Wolf-death .... 142 


CONTENTS. 


xii 

2300 k IV. 

THE LOVE TALE. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Indian Town 15 1 

II. The White Woman in the Wood . . 159 

III. Cecil and the War-Chief 169 

IV. Archery and Gambling 176 

V. A Dead Queen’s Jewels 181 

VI. The Twilight Tale 191 

VII. Orator against Orator 200 

VIII. In the Dark 210 

IX. Questioning the Dead 217 

23 o 0 k V. 

THE SHADOIV OF THE END. 

I. The Hand of the Great Spirit ^ . . 227 

II. The Marriage and the Breaking Up 241 

III. At the Cascades 248 

IV. Multnomah’s Death-canoe 260 

V. As Was Writ in the Book of Fate . 268 


ILLUSTRATIONS, 


“ ‘ What think you now, Tohomish ? ’ ” . . Frontispiece 

“ ‘ I have spoken ; I will not turn back from 

my words ’ ” Facing page 50 

“ ‘ The Earth hears us, the Sun sees us ’ ” . “ 88 


The Great “ Witch Mountain ” of the Indians “ 108 

“ ‘ I will kill him “ 168 

“ It was the Death-song of the Willamettes ” “ 204 

“ ‘ Come back ! Come back ! ’ ” “ 224 

264 


Multomah’s Death-canoe 


What tall and tawny men were these, 
As sombre, silent, as the trees 
They moved among ! and sad some way 
With tempered sadness, ever they, 

Y et not with sorrow born of fear. 

The shadows of their destinies 
They saw approaching year by year. 

And murmured not. 


They turned to death as to a sleep. 
And died with eager hands held out 
To reaching hands beyond the deep; 
And died with choicest bow at hand. 
And quiver full and arrow drawn 
F or use, when sweet to-morrow’s dawn 
Should wake them in the Spirit Land. 


Joaquin Miller. 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


BOOK 1. 


THE APOSTLE TO THE INDIANS, 


CHAPTER I. 


THE NEW ENGLAND MEETING. 


Such as sit in darkness and the shadow of death. — Bible. 
NE Sabbath morning more than two hundred 



years ago, the dawn broke clear and beautiful 
over New England. It was one of those lovely 
mornings that seem like a benediction, a smile of 
God upon the earth, so calm are they, so full of un- 
utterable rest and quiet. Over the sea, with its end- 
less line of beach and promontory washed softly by 
the ocean swells ; over the towns of the coast, — Bos- 
ton and Salem, — already large, giving splendid prom- 
ise of the future ; over the farms and hamlets of the 
interior, and into the rude clearings where the outer 
limits of civilization mingled with the primeval forest, 
came a flood of light as the sun rose above the blue 
line of eastern sea. And still beyond, across the 
Alleghanies, into the depth of the wilderness, passed 
the sweet, calm radiance, as if bearing a gleam of 
gospel sunshine to the Indians of the forest. 


14 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


Nowhere did the Sunday seem more peaceful 
than in a sheltered valley in Massachusetts. Beauti- 
ful indeed were the thrifty orchards, the rustic farm- 
houses, the meadows where the charred stumps that 
marked the last clearing were festooned with running 
vines, the fields green with Indian corn, and around 
all the sweep of hills dark with the ancient wood. 
Even the grim unpainted meeting-house on the hill, 
which was wont to look the very personification of 
the rigid Calvinistic theology preached within it, 
seemed a little less bare and forbidding on that 
sweet June Sabbath. 

As the hour for morning service drew near, the 
drummer took his accustomed stand before the 
church and began to thunder forth his summons, — a 
summons not unfitting those stem Puritans whose 
idea of religion was that of a life-long warfare against 
the world, the flesh, and the devil. 

Soon the people began to gather, — grave men and 
women, dressed in the sober-colored garb of the day, 
and little children, clad in their Sunday best,” un- 
dergoing the awful process of “ going to meeting,” yet 
some of them, at least, looking at the cool shadowed 
wood as they passed, and thinking how pleasant it 
would be to hunt berries or birds’ nests in those 
sylvan retreats instead of listening to a two hours’ 
sermon, under imminent danger of perdition if they 
went to sleep, — for in such seductive guise did the 
Evil One tempt the souls of these youthful Puritans. 
Solemn of visage and garb were the groups, although 
here and there the gleam of a bit of ribbon at the 
throat of some young maiden, or a bonnet tastefully 
adorned, showed that the world, the flesh, and 


THE NEW ENGLAND MEETING. 1$ 

the devil ” were not yet wholly subdued among 
them. 

As the audience filed through the open door, the 
men and women divided, the former taking one side 
of the house, the latter the other, — the aisle forming 
a dividing line between them. The floor was un- 
carpeted, the walls bare, the pulpit undraped, and 
upon it the hour-glass stood beside the open Bible. 
Anything more stiff and barren than the interior of 
the meeting-house it would be difficult to find. 

An unwonted stir breaks the silence and solemnity 
of the waiting congregation, as an official party enters. 
It is the Governor of the colony and his staff, who are 
making a tour of the province, and have stopped over 
Sunday in the little frontier settlement, — for although 
the Governor is an august man, even he may not pre- 
sume to travel on the Sabbath in this land of the 
Puritans. The new-comers are richly dressed. There 
is something heavy, massive, and splendid in their 
garb, especially in the Governor’s. He is a stately 
military-looking man, and wears his ample vestments, 
his embroidered gloves, his lace and ruffles, with a 
magisterial air. 

A rustle goes through the audience as the distin- 
guished visitors pass up the aisle to the front seats 
assigned, as the custom was, to dignitaries. Young 
people steal curious glances at them ; children turn 
around in their seats to stare, provoking divers shakes 
of the head from their elders, and in one instance 
the boxing of an ear, at which the culprit sets up a 
smothered howl, is ignominiously shaken, and sits 
swelling and choking with indignant grief during the 
remainder of the service. 


1 6 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

At length the drum ceased, indicating both the 
arrival of the minister and the time for service to 
begin. 

The minister took his place in the pulpit. He was 
a young man, of delicate mould, with a pale and in- 
tellectual face. Exquisite sensitiveness was in the 
large gray eyes, the white brow, the delicate lips, the 
long slender fingers; yet will and energy and com- 
mand were in them all. His was that rare union of 
extreme sensibility with strong resolution that has 
given the world its religious leaders, — its Savonarolas 
and Chrysostoms ; men whose nerves shrank at a dis- 
cord in music, but when inspired by some grand 
cause, were like steel to suffer and endure. 

Something of this was in the minister’s aspect, as 
he stood before the people that morning. His eyes 
shone and dilated, and his slight figure gathered dig- 
nity as his gaze met that of the assembly. There 
was no organ, that instrument being deemed a device 
of the Prince of Darkness to lead the hearts of the 
unwary off to popery; but the opening hymn was 
heartily sung. Then came the Scripture reading, — 
usually a very monotonous performance on the part 
of Puritan divines ; but as given in the young min- 
ister’s thoughtfully modulated voice, nothing could 
have been more expressive. Every word had its 
meaning, every metaphor was a picture ; the whole 
psalm seemed to breathe with life and power : 
“ Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all 
generations.” 

Majestic, mournful, yet thrilling with deathless 
hope, was the minister’s voice ; and the people were 
deeply moved. The prayer followed, — not the end- 


THE NEW ENGLAND MEETING. 17 

less monologue of the average Puritan clergyman, but 
pointed, significant, full of meaning. Again his face 
was lifted before them as he rose to announce the 
text. It was paler now ; the eyes were glowing and 
luminous ; the long, expressive fingers were tremulous 
with excitement. It was evident to all that no com- 
mon subject was to be introduced, no common effort 
to be made. Always composed, the audience grew 
more quiet still. The very children felt the hush of 
expectation, and gazed wonderingly at the minister. 
Even that great man, the Governor, lost his air of 
unbending grandeur, and leaned expectantly forward. 

The subject was Paul’s vision of the man in Mace- 
donia crying for help. The speaker portrayed in burn- 
ing words the condition of Macedonia, the heathen 
gloom and utter hopelessness of her people, the vision 
that came to Paul, and his going to preach to them. 
Then, passing to England under the Druids, he de- 
scribed the dark paganism, the blood-stained altars, 
the brutal priesthood of the age ; and told of the cry 
that went forth for light, — a cry that touched the 
heart of the Roman Gregory into sending missionaries 
to show them the better way. 

Like some royal poem was the discourse, as it 
showed how, through the storms and perils of more 
than a thousand years, amid the persecution of popes, 
the wars of barons, and the tyranny of kings, England 
had kept the torch burning, till in these latter times 
it had filled the world with light. Beautiful was the 
tribute he paid to the more recent defenders of the 
faith, and most intense the interest of the listeners ; 
for men sat there who had come over the seas be- 
cause of their loyalty to the faith, — old and grizzled 
2 


1 8 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

men, whose youth had known Cromwell and Charles 
Stuart, and who had in more recent years fought for 
‘‘ King Monmouth ” and shared the dark fortunes of 
Argyle. 

The old Governor was roused like a veteran war- 
horse at the sound of the trumpet ; many faces were 
flushed with martial ardor. The young minister 
paused reflectively at the enthusiasm he had kindled. 
A sorrowful smile flitted around his lips, though the 
glow of inspiration was still burning in his eyes. 
Would they be as enthusiastic when he made the ap- 
plication of his discourse? 

And yet England, yea, even New England, was 
false, disloyal. She had but half kept the faith. 
When the cry of pagan England had gone forth for 
light, it had been heard ; the light had been given. 
But now in her day of illumination, when the Mace- 
donian cry came to her, she closed her ears and lis- 
tened not. On her skirts was the blood of the souls 
of men j and at the last day the wail of the heathen 
as they went down into the gulf of flame would bear 
witness against her. 

Grave and impassioned, with an undertone of warn- 
ing and sorrow, rang the voice of the minister, and 
the hearts of the people were shaken as though a 
prophet were speaking. 

Out from the forests around us come the cry of 
heathen folk, and ye will not listen. Ye have the 
light, and they perish in darkness and go down to 
the pit. Generation after generation has grown up 
here in forest and mountain, and has lived and died 
without God and without hope. Generation has fol- 
lowed generation, stumbling blindly downward to the 


THE NEW ENGLAND MEETING. 19 

dust like the brutes that perish. And now their chil- 
dren, bound in iron and sitting under the shadow of 
death, reach out their hands from the wilderness with 
a blind cry to you for help. Will ye hear? ” 

He lifted his hands to them as he spoke ; there 
was infinite pathos in his voice ; for a moment it 
seemed as if all the wild people of the wilderness 
were pleading through him for light. Tears were in 
many eyes; yet in spite of the wonderful power of 
his oratory, there were faces that grew stern as he 
spoke, — for only a few years had passed since the 
Pequod war, and the feeling against the Indians was 
bitter. The Governor now sat erect and indignant. 

Strong and vehement was the minister’s plea for 
missionaries to be sent to the Indians; fearlessly 
was the colonial government arraigned for its defi- 
ciencies in this regard; and the sands in the hour- 
glass were almost run out when the sermon was con- 
cluded and the minister sank flushed and exhausted 
into his seat. 

The closing psalm was sung, and the audience was 
dismissed. Slow and lingering were the words of the 
benediction, as if the preacher were conscious of de- 
feat and longed to plead still further with his peo- 
ple. Then the gathering broke up, the congregation 
filing out with the same solemnity that had marked 
the entrance. But when the open air was reached, 
the pent-up excitement burst forth in a general mur- 
mur of comment. 

A good man,” remarked the Governor to his 
staff, ‘‘but young, quite young.” And they smiled 
approvingly at the grim irony of the tone. 

“Our pastor is a fine speaker,” said another, “but 


20 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


why will he bring such unpleasant things into the pul- 
pit? A good doctrinal sermon, now, would have 
strengthened our faith and edified us all.” 

‘‘ Ay, a sermon on the errors of Episcopacy, for 
instance.” 

“ Such talk makes me angry,” growled a third. 
‘‘ Missionaries for the Indians ! when the bones of 
the good folk they have killed are yet bleaching amid 
the ashes of their cabins ! Missionaries for those red 
demons ! an’ had it been powder and shot for them 
it had been a righteous sermon.” 

So the murmur of disapprobation went on among 
those slowly dispersing groups who dreaded and hated 
the Indian with an intensity such as we now can hardly 
realize. And among them came the minister, pale 
and downcast, realizing that he had dashed himself 
in vain against the stern prejudice of his people and 
his age. 


THE MINISTER'S HOME. 


2t 


CHAPTER II. 


THE minister’s HOME. 


Sore have I panted at the sun’s decline, 
To pass with him into the crimson West, 
And see the peoples of the evening. 


Edwin Arnold. 



HE Reverend Cecil Grey, — for such was our 


young minister’s name, — proceeded immedi- 
ately after the service to his home. Before we cross 
its threshold with him, let us pause for a moment to 
look back over his past life. 

Born in New England, he first received from his 
father, who was a fine scholar, a careful home train- 
ing, and was then sent to England to complete his 
educatioji. At Magdalen College, Oxford, he spent 
six years. Time passed very happily with him in the 
quiet cloisters of that most beautiful of English col- 
leges, with its memories of Pole and Rupert, and the 
more courtly traditions of the state that Richard and 
Edward had held there. But when, in 1687, James 
II. attempted to trample on the privileges of the Fel- 
lows and force upon them a popish president, Cecil 
was one of those who made the famous protest against 
it ; and when protests availed nothing, he left Oxford, 
as also did a number of others. Returning to Amer- 
ica, he was appointed pastor of a New England 
church, becoming one of the many who carried the 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

flower of scholarship and eloquence into the bleak 
wilds of the New World. 

Restless, sensitive, ardent, he was a man to whom 
a settled pastorate was impossible. Daring enter- 
prises, great undertakings of a religious nature yet full 
of peril, were the things for which he was naturally 
fitted; and amid the monotonous routine of parish 
duties he longed for a greater activity. Two centuries 
later he might have become distinguished as a revi- 
valist or as a champion of new and startling views of 
theology ; earlier, he might have been a reformer, a 
follower of Luther or Loyola ; as it was, he was out 
of his sphere. 

But for a time the Reverend Mr. Grey tried hard 
to mould himself to his new work. He went with 
anxious fidelity through all the labors of the country 
pastorate. He visited and prayed with the sick, he 
read the Bible to the old and dim- sighted, he tried to 
reconcile petty quarrels, he wrestled with his own 
discontent, and strove hard to grind down all the 
aspirations of his nature and shut out the larger 
horizon of life. 

And for a time he was successful ; but during it he 
was induced to take a very fatal step. He was young, 
handsome, a clergyman, and unmarried. Now a 
young unmarried minister is pre-eminently one of 
sorrows and acquainted with grief. For that large 
body of well-meaning people who are by nature in- 
capacitated from attending to their own business take 
him in hand without mercy. Innumerable are the 
ways in which he is informed that he ought to be mar- 
ried. Subtle and past finding out are the plots laid by 
all the old ladies and match-makers of his church to 


THE MINISTER'S HOME. 


23 


promote that desired event. He is told that he can 
never succeed in the ministry till he is married. The 
praises of Matilda Jane Tompkins or Lucinda Brown 
are sounded in his ears till he almost wishes that 
both were in a better world, — a world more wor- 
thy their virtues. At length, wearily capitulating, he 
marries some wooden- faced or angular saint, and is 
unhappy for life. 

Now there was in Mr. Grey’s church a good, gentle 
girl, narrow but not wooden-faced, famous for her 
neatness and her housekeeping abilities, who was 
supposed to be the pattern for a minister’s wife. In 
time gone by she had set her heart on a graceless 
sailor lad who was drowned at sea, much to the relief 
of her parents. Ruth Anderson had mourned for him 
quietly, shutting up her sorrow in her own breast and 
going about her work as before ; for hers was one of 
those subdued, practical natures that seek relief from 
trouble in hard work. 

She seemed in the judgment of all the old women 
in the church the “very one” for Mr. Grey; and it 
likewise seemed that Mr. Grey was the “ very one ” for 
her. So divers hints were dropped and divers things 
were said, until each began to wonder if marriage 
were not a duty. The Reverend Cecil Grey began 
to take unusual pains with his toilet, and wended his 
way up the hill to Mr. Anderson’s with very much the 
aspect of a man who is going to be hanged. And his 
attempts at conversation with the maiden were not at 
all what might have been expected from the young 
minister whose graceful presence and fluent eloquence 
had been the boast of Magdalen. On her part the 
embarrassment was equally great. At length they 


24 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS, 

were married, — a marriage based on a false idea of 
duty on each side. But no idea of duty, however 
strong or however false, could blind the eyes of this 
married pair to the terrible fact that not only love but 
mental sympathy was wanting. Day by day Cecil 
felt that his wife did not love him, that her thoughts 
were not for him, that it was an effort for her to act 
the part of a wife toward him. Day by day she felt 
that his interests lay beyond her reach, and that all 
the tenderness in hjs manner toward her came from 
a sense of duty, not from love. 

But she strove in all ways to be a faithful wife, and 
he tried hard to be a kind and devoted husband. 
He had been especially attentive to her of late, for 
her health had been failing, and the old doctor had 
shaken his head very gravely over her. For a week 
or more she had grown steadily worse, and was now 
unable even to walk without help. Her malady was 
one of those that sap away the life with a swift and 
deadly power against which all human skill seems 
unavailing. 

Mr. Grey on returning from church entered the 
living room. The invalid sat at the window, a heavy 
shawl wrapped about her, her pale face turned to the 
far blue line of sea, visible through a gap in the hills. 
A pang wrenched his heart keenly at the sight. Why 
would she always sit at that window looking so sor- 
rowfully, so abstractedly at the sea, as if her heart 
was buried there with her dead lover? 

She started as she heard his footstep, and turned 
her head quickly toward him, a faint flush tinging her 
cheek and a forced smile quivering around her lips. 
Her greeting was very gentle, and he saw that her 


THE MINISTER’S HOME, 


25 


heart was reproaching her for being so disloyal to 
him as to think of her lost lover; and yet he felt 
her fingers tremble and shrink away from his as he 
took her hand. 

God forgive me ! ” he thought, with infinite self- 
accusation. ‘‘ How repugnant I must be to her, — 
an intruder, thrusting myself into the heart that is 
sacred to the dead.” 

But he let her see nothing of this in his voice or 
manner as he inquired how she had been. She re- 
plied wearily that she was no better, that she longed 
to get well again and be at work. 

‘‘ I missed your sermon to-day,” she said, with that 
strained, pathetic smile upon her lips again. You 
must tell me about it now.” 

He drew his chair to her side and began to give 
an outline of the sermon. She listened, but it was 
with forced attention, without sympathy, without in 
the least entering into the spirit of what he was say- 
ing. It pained him. He knew that her nature was 
so narrow, so conventional, that it was impossible 
for her to comprehend his grand scheme of Indian 
evangelization. But he checked his impatience, and 
gave her a full synopsis of the discourse. 

“ It is useless, useless. They cannot understand. 
A whole race is perishing around them, and they will 
not put forth a hand save to mistreat a Quaker or 
throw a stone at a Churchman. Our Puritanism is 
like iron to resist tyranny, — but alas ! it is like iron, 
too, when one tries to bend it to some generous 
undertaking.” 

He stopped, checking back other and more bitter 
words. All his soul rose up in revolt against the prej- 


26 


■THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


udice by which he was surrounded. Then Ruth 
spoke timidly. 

Seeing that it is so, would it not be best to let 
this missionary subject go, and preach on practical 
every-day matters ? I am not wise in these things, I 
know ; but would it not be better to preach on com- 
mon subjects, showing us how we ought to live from 
day to day, than to discourse of those larger things 
that the people do not imderstand?” 

His face darkened, though not angrily. This was 
the same prejudice he had just encountered in the 
meeting-house, though in a different form. He arose 
and paced back and forth with quick, impatient steps. 
Then he came and stood before her with folded arms 
and resolute face. 

“ Ruth, I have tried that so often, tried it with pray- 
ers and tears, but it is utterly impossible. I cannot 
bring myself to it. You know what the physicians 
say of my disease of the heart, — that my life may be 
very short ; and I want it to be noble. I want to 
live for the greatest possibilities within my reach. I 
want to set some great work in motion that will 
light up thousands of darkened lives, — yea, and 
grow in might and power even after my lips are sealed 
in death.” 

The little figure on the chair moved uneasily under 
his animated though kindly gaze. 

** 1 do not quite comprehend you. I think the best 
work is to do what God gives us to do, and to do it well. 
To me he has given to labor in caring for the house,” 
— there was a patient weariness in her tone that did 
not escape Cecil, — to you he has given the duties 
of a pastor, to strengthen the weak, cheer the sorrow- 


THE MINISTER'S HOME. 


27 


ing, comfort the old. Is it not better to do those 
things faithfully than to spend our time longing for 
some more ideal work not given us?” 

‘‘ But suppose the ideal work is given ? Suppose 
a man is called to proclaim new truths, and be the 
leader in a new reform? For him the quiet pastor- 
ate is impossible ; nay, were it possible, it would be 
wrong, for would he not be keeping back the mes- 
sage God had given him? He would be one called 
to a work, yet entering not upon it ; and upon him 
would come the curse that fell on the unfaithful 
prophets of old.” 

All the gloom of the theology of his age was on 
him as he spoke. Refined and poetic as was his 
nature, it was thoroughly imbued with the Calvinism 
of early New England. 

She lifted her hand wearily and passed it over her 
aching brow. 

I do not know,” she said ; I have never thought 
of such things, only it seems to me that God knew 
best when he gave us our lots in life. Surely wher- 
ever we find ourselves, there he intended us to be, 
and there we should patiently work, leaving our 
higher aspirations to his will. Is not the ideal life, 
after all, the one that is kindest and humblest ? ” 

But, Ruth,” replied the minister, sadly, while 
the work you describe is certainly noble, I have yet 
felt for a long time that it is not what God calls me 
to. Day after day, night after night, I think of the 
wild races that roam the forests to the west, of which 
no man knows the end. Sometimes I think that I 
am called to stand before the rulers of the colony 
and plead that missionaries be sent to the Indians. 


28 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


Sometimes I feel that I am called to go and preach 
to them myself. Often in my dreams I plead with 
dark-browed sachems or with mighty gatherings of 
warriors to cast away their blood-stained weapons 
and accept Christ, till I awake all trembling with the 
effort. And always the deadly pain at my heart 
warns me that what is done must be done quickly.” 

The burning ardor that had given such intensity to 
his sermon came into his voice as he spoke. The in- 
valid moved nervously on her chair, and he saw that 
his enthusiasm merely jarred on her without awaken- 
ing any response. 

Forgive me,*' he said hurriedly, I forgot that 
you were not well enough to talk of those things. 
Sometime when you are better we will speak of them 
again.” 

Arid then he talked of other and to her more in- 
teresting topics, while a keen pang rankled in his 
breast to find her irresponsive to that which was so 
dear to him. 

But he was very kind to her ; and when after a 
while the old Indian woman, Cecil’s nurse in child- 
hood and their only servant now, came to tell him 
that dinner was ready, he would not go until he had 
first brought his wife her dinner and waited on her 
with his own hands. 

After his own repast was finished he must hasten 
away to preach his afternoon sermon. But he came 
to her first and bent over her ; for though love never 
had been, perhaps never could be, between them, there 
was a deep domestic feeling in his nature. 

‘‘ How good and patient you are in your sickness,’* 
he said, gazing down into the quiet, wistful face that 


THE MINISTER'S HOME. 


29 


was so honest and true, yet so thoroughly prosaic and 
commonplace. << What a sermon you have been 
preaching me, sitting here so uncomplainingly.” 

**Doyou think so?” she said, looking up grate- 
fully. I am glad. I so want to do my duty by 
you.” 

He had meant to kiss her as he bent over her, 
though such caresses were rare between them, but 
there was something in her tones that chilled him, 
and he merely raised a tress of her hair to his lips 
instead. At the door he bade her a pleasant farewell, 
but his countenance grew sorrowful as he went down 
the path. 

Duty,” he murmured, always duty, never love. 
Well, the fault is my own that we were ever married. 
God help me to be true and kind to her always. She 
shall never know that I miss anything in her.” 

And he preached to his congregation that after- 
noon a sermon on burden-bearing, showing how each 
should bear his own burden patiently, — not darkening 
the lives of others by complaint, but always saying 
loving words, no matter how much of heartache lay 
beneath them. He told how near God is to us all, 
ready to heal and to strengthen ; and closed by show- 
ing how sweet and beautiful even a common life may 
grow through brave and self-sacrificing endurance of 
trouble. 

It was a helpful sermon, a sermon that brought 
the listeners nearer God. More than one heart was 
touched by those earnest words that seemed to breathe 
divine sympathy and compassion. 

He went home feeling more at peace than he had 
done for many days. His wife’s room was still, as he 


30 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

entered it. She was in her easy-chair at the window, 
lying back among the pillows asleep. Her face was 
flushed and feverish, her long lashes wet with tears. 
The wraps had fallen away from her, and he stooped 
over to replace them. As he did so her lips moved 
in her half-delirious slumber, and she murmured some 
name sounding like his own. A wild throb of joy 
thrilled through him, and he bent closer to listen. 
Again she spoke the name, spoke it sorrowfully, long- 
ingly. It was the name of her lover drowned at sea. 

The long, nervous fingers that held the half-drawn 
wraps shook convulsively as with acutest pain, then 
drew the coverings gently around her. 

“ God help her, God help her ! ” he murmured, as 
he turned softly away, his eyes filling with tears, — ' 
tears for her sorrow rather than his own. 


A DARKENED FIRESIDE. 


31 


CHAPTER III. 

A DARKENED FIRESIDE. 

. . . Her way is parted from my way ; 

Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal may we meet ? 

Dante Rossetti. 

"DUTH was much worse in the evening, but at 
last, after Cecil had watched at her side till a 
late hour, she sank into a troubled sleep. Then the 
old Indian servant insisted on taking his place at the 
sufferer’s bedside, for she saw that he was much worn 
by the labors of the day and by anxiety for his wife. 
At first he refused j but she was a skilled nurse, and 
he knew that the invalid would fare better in her 
hands than his own, so at last he consented on con- 
dition that she would call him if his wife grew worse. 
The woman promised, and he withdrew into the 
library, where a temporary bed had been made for 
him. At the door he turned and looked back. 

His wife lay with closed eyes and flushed face amid 
the white pillows. The robe over her breast stirred 
with her difficult breathing, and her head turned now 
and then from side to side while she uttered broken, 
feverish words. By her sat the swarthy nurse, watch- 
ing her every movement and ready with observant 
eye and gentle touch to minister to all her needs. 

A yearning tenderness and pity came into his gaze. 

Poor child, poor child ! ” he thought. “ If I could 
only make her well and happy ! If I could only bring 


32 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


her dead lover back to life, how gladly would I put 
her in his arms and go away forever ! ” And it 
seemed to him in some dim way that he had wronged 
the poor sulferer; that he was to blame for her 
sorrow. 

He went on into the library. A lamp was burning 
on the table ; a Hebrew Bible and a copy of Homer lay 
beside it. Along the walls were arranged those heavy 
and ponderous tomes in which the theology of the age 
was wont to clothe itself. 

He seated himself at the table and took up his 
Homer ; for he was too agitated to sleep. But it was 
in vain that he tried to interest himself in it. The 
rhythm had lost its music, the thought its power ; it 
was in vain that he tried to forget himself in the 
reply of Achilles, or the struggle over the body of 
Patroclus. 

Hawthorne tells us that a person of artistic tem- 
perament may at a time of mental depression wander 
through the Roman galleries and see nothing in the 
finest masterpieces of Raphael or Angelo. The 
grace is gone from the picture, the inspiration from 
the marble; the one is a meaningless collection of 
colors, the other a dull effigy carved in stone. 

Something of this mood was on Cecil to-night. 
Irresponsive to the grand beauty of the poem, he felt 
only its undertone of heartache and woe. 

“ It is like human life,” he thought, as he listlessly 
turned the pages ; it is bright on the surface, but 
dark and terrible with pain below. What a black 
mystery is life ! what bitter irony of justice 1 Hector 
is dragged at Achilles’ chariot-wheel, and Paris goes 
free. Helen returns to her home in triumph, while 


A DARKENED FIRESIDE. 33 

Andromache is left desolate. Did Homer write in 
satire, and is the Iliad but a splendid mockery of 
justice, human and divine? Or is life so sad that 
every tale woven of it must needs become a tragedy? ” 

He pondered the gloomy puzzle of human exis- 
tence long that night. At length his brain grew 
over- weary, and he slept sitting in his chair, his head 
resting on the pages of the open book. 

How long he slept he knew not, but he awoke with 
a start to find a hand laid on his shoulder and the tall 
figure of the Indian woman standing beside him. He 
sprang up in sudden fear. 

“ Is she worse ? ” he cried. But the woman, with 
that light noiseless step, that mute stolidity so char- 
acteristic of her race, had already glided to the door ; 
and there was no need for her to answer, for already 
his own apprehensions had replied. 

He was in the room almost as soon as she. His 
wife was much worse ; and hastening through the 
night to a neighboring farmhouse, he roused its in- 
mates, despatched a messenger for the physician, and 
returned, accompanied by several members of the 
neighbor’s family. 

The slow moments dragged away like years as they 
watched around her. It seemed as if the doctor 
would never come. To the end of his life Cecil never 
forgot the long-drawn agony of that night. 

At length their strained hearing caught the quick 
tread of horses’ hoofs on the turf without. 

“ The doctor, the doctor ! ” came simultaneously 
from the lips of Cecil and the watchers. The doctor, 
— there was hope in the very name. 

How eagerly they watched his face as he bent over 
3 


34 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

the patient ! It was a calm, self-contained face, hut 
they saw a shadow flit over it, a sudden almost imper- 
ceptible change of expression that said Death ” as 
plainly as if he had spoken it. They could do noth- 
ing, he said, — nothing but wait for the end to come. 

How the moments lingered ! Sometimes Cecil bent 
over the sufferer with every muscle quivering to her 
paroxysms ; sometimes he could endure it no longer 
and went out into the cool night air or into the li- 
brary, where with the mere mechanical instinct of a 
student he picked up a book, reading a few lines in it, 
then throwing it aside. Yet wherever he was he felt 
her sufferings as acutely as when standing by her side. 
His whole frame was in keenest sympathy with hers, 
his whole being full of pain. So sharp were his sen- 
sations that they imparted an abnormal vigor to his 
mind. Every line his eyes met in reading stood out 
on the page with wonderful distinctness. The words 
seemed pictorial, and his mind grasped abstruse prop- 
ositions or involved expressions with marvellous facility. 

He noted it, and remembered afterward that he 
thought at the time how curious it was that his tor- 
tured sympathies should give him such startling acute- 
ness of perception. 

The slow night waned, the slow dawn crept over 
the eastern hills. Cecil stood with haggard eyes at the 
foot of the bed, watching the sleeper’s face. As the 
daylight brightened, blending with the light of the still 
burning lamps, he saw a change come over her coun- 
tenance ; the set face relaxed, the look lost its wild- 
ness. A great hope shone in his hollow eyes. 

“ She is getting better, she is coming out of her 
sufferings,” he whispered to the doctor. 


A DARKENED FIRESIDE. 


35 


She will be out of her sufferings very soon,” he 
replied sadly ; and then Cecil knew that the end was 
at hand. Was it because the peace, the profound 
serenity which sometimes is the prelude of death, fill- 
ing her being, penetrated his, that he grew so strangely 
calm? An inexpressible solemnity came to him as 
he looked at her, and all his agitation left him. 

Her face grew very sweet and calm, and full of 
peace. Her eyes met Cecil’s, and there was in them 
something that seemed to thank him for all his good- 
ness and patience, — something that was both bene- 
diction and farewell. Her lips moved, but she was 
past the power of speech, and only her eyes thanked 
him in a tender, grateful glance. 

The sun’s edge flashed above the horizon, and its 
first rays fell through the uncurtained window full 
upon her face. She turned toward them, smiling 
faintly, and her face grew tenderly, radiantly beauti- 
ful, as if on that beam of sunshine the spirit of her 
dead lover had come to greet her from the sea. 
Then the sparkle died out of her eyes and the smile 
faded from her lips. It was only a white, dead face 
that lay there bathed in golden light. 

A moment after, Cecil left the house with swift 
footsteps and plunged into the adjacent wood. There 
under a spreading oak he flung himself prone upon 
the earth, and buried his face in his hands. A seeth- 
ing turmoil of thoughts swept his mind. The past 
rose before him like a panorama. All his married 
life rushed back upon him, and every memory was 
regret and accusation. 

I might have been kinder to her, I might have 
been better,” he murmured, while the hot tears gushed 


36 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

from his eyes. I might have been so much better 
to her,” he repeated over and over, — he, whose whole 
thought had been to shut up his sorrow in his own heart 
and show her only tenderness and consideration. 

By and by he grew calmer and sat up, leaning 
against the tree and looking out into vacancy with 
dim eyes that saw nothing. His heart was desolate, 
emptied of everything. What was he to do ? What 
was he to set before himself? He had not loved 
her, but still she had been a part of his life ; with 
what was he to fill it now? 

As he sat there depressed and troubled, a strange 
thing happened. 

He was looking, as has been said, blindly into va- 
cancy. It may have been an optical illusion, it may 
have been a mere vagary bom of an over-wrought 
brain ; but a picture formed before him. In the dis- 
tance, toward the west, he saw something that looked 
like a great arch of stone, a natural bridge, rugged 
with crags and dark with pine. Beneath it swept a 
wide blue river, and on it wild horsemen were cross- 
ing and recrossing, with plumed hair and mde lances. 
Their faces were Indian, yet of a type different from 
any he had ever seen. The bridge was in the heart 
of a mighty mountain- range. On either side rose 
sharp and lofty peaks, their sides worn by the action 
of water in some remote age. 

These details he noted as in a dream ; then the 
strangeness of it all burst upon him. Even as it did 
so, the vision dissolved ; the bridge wavered and passed 
away, the mountain-peaks sank in shadow. He leaped 
to his feet and gazed eagerly. A fine mist seemed 
passing before his sight ; then he saw only the reach 


A DARUrEATED FIRESIDE. 37 

of hill and woodland, with the morning light resting 
upon it. 

While the vision faded, he felt springing up within 
him an irrepressible desire to follow it. A mysterious 
fascination seized him, a wild desire to seek the phan- 
tom bridge. His whole being was swayed as by a su- 
pernatural power toward the west whence the vision 
had passed. He started forward eagerly, then checked 
himself in bewilderment. What could it mean? 

In the nineteenth century, one similarly affected 
would think it meant a fevered, a disordered brain ; 
but in the seventeenth, when statesmen like Cromwell 
believed in dreams and omens, and roues like Mon- 
mouth carried charms in their pockets, these things 
were differently regarded. 

The Puritan ministry, whose minds were imbued 
with the gloomy supernaturalism of the Old Testa- 
ment on which they fed, were especially men to 
whom anything resembling an apparition had a pro- 
phetic significance. And Cecil Grey, though liberal 
beyond most New England clergymen, was liable by 
the keenness of his susceptibilities and the extreme 
sensitiveness of his organization to be influenced by 
such delusions, — if delusions they be. So he stood 
awed and trembling, questioning within himself, like 
some seer to whom a dark and uncertain revelation 
has been made. 

Suddenly the answer came. 

‘‘The Lord hath revealed his will unto me and 
shown me the path wherein I am to walk,” he mur- 
mured in a hushed and stricken tone. “ Ruth was 
taken from me that I might be free to go where he 
should send me. The vision of the Indians and the 


38 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

bridge which faded into the west, and the strange 
desire that was given me to follow it, show that the 
Lord has another work for me to do. And when I 
find the land of the bridge and of the wild people I 
saw upon it, then will I find the mission that God has 
given me to do. Lord God of Israel, I thank Thee. 
Thou hast shown me the way, and I will walk in it, 
though all its stones be fire and its end be death.” 

He stood a moment with bowed head, communing 
with his God. Then he returned to his lonely home. 

The friends whose kindly sympathies had brought 
them to the house of mourning wondered at the erect 
carriage, the rapt, exalted manner of the man. His 
face was pale, almost as pale as that within the 
darkened room ; but his eyes shone, and his lips were 
closely, resolutely set. 

A little while, and that determined face was all sor- 
rowful and pitying again, as he bent over the still, cold 
body of his dead. 


THE COUNCIL OF ORDINATION. 


39 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE COUNCIL OF ORDINATION. 

Friends were assembled together ; the Elder and Magistrate also 
Graced the scene with their presence, and stood like the Law and 
the Gospel .... 

After the Puritan way and the laudable custom of Holland. 


The Courtship of Miles Standish. 


FEW days after the funeral, letters missive from 



the little society went out to all the neighbor- 
ing churches, calling a council to ordain the Rever- 
end Cecil Grey a missionary to the Indians. 

It was a novel thing, in spite of the noble example 
that Roger Williams had set not many years before ; 
and the summons met with a general response. 

All the churches, far and near, sent delegates. If 
one could only have taken a peep, the day before the 
council, into the households of that part of New Eng- 
land, what a glimpse he would have gotten of Puritan 
domestic life ! What a brushing up there was of 
black coats, what a careful starching and ironing of 
bands; and above all, in Cecil’s own neighborhood, 
what a mighty cookery for the ordination dinner the 
next day ! For verily the capacity of the clerical 
stomach is marvellous, and is in fact the one thing in 
theology that does not change. New departures alter 
doctrines, creeds are modified, but the appetite of 
the clergy is not subject to such mutations. 


40 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


The morrow came, and with it the expected guests. 
The meeting-house was crowded. There were many 
ministers and lay delegates in the council. In the 
chair sat a venerable preacher, not unknown in the 
records of those days, — a portly man, with a shrewd 
and kindly face. Sterner faces were there also. The 
council wore a grave aspect, more like a court of 
judges before whom a criminal is cited to appear 
than an assembly of clergymen about to ordain a 
missionary. 

After some preliminaries, Cecil was called on to 
give a statement of his reasons for wishing to go as 
an evangelist to the Indians. He rose before them. 
There was a singular contrast between his slight form 
and expressive features and the stout frames and grim 
countenances of the others. But the graceful presence 
of the man had in it a quiet dignity that commanded 
the respect of all. 

In obedience to the command, he told how he had 
thought of the unknown tribes beyond the Allegha- 
nies, living in the gloom of paganism and perishing 
in darkness, till an intangible sympathy inclined him 
toward them, — till, as it seemed to him, their great 
desire for light had entered into and possessed him, 
drawing him toward them by a mysterious and irre- 
sistible attraction. He felt called of God to go and 
minister to their spiritual needs, and that it was his 
duty to leave everything and obey the call. 

Is this all? ” he was asked. 

He hesitated a moment, and then described his 
vision in the wood the morning of his wife’s death. 
It made a deep impression on his hearers. There 
was scarcely a man in the assembly who was not 


THE COUNCIL OF ORDINATION. 41 

tinged with the superstition of the age j and all lis- 
tened, not lightly or sceptically, but in awe, as if it 
brought them to the threshold of the supernatural. 

When the narration was ended, the chairman re- 
quested him to retire, pending the decision of the 
council j but first he was asked, — 

Are you willing to abide by the decision of this 
council, whatever it may be? ” 

He raised his head confidently, and his reply came 
frank and fearless. 

“I shall respect the opinions of my brethren, 
no matter how they may decide ; but I shall abide 
by the will of God and my own convictions of 
duty.” 

The grave Puritan bent his head, half in acknowl- 
edgment of the reply, half in involuntary admiration 
of its brave manhood ; then Cecil left the room, the 
silent, watchful crowd that filled the aisles parting 
respectfully to let him pass. 

^‘Now, brethren,” said the chairman, “the matter 
is before you. Let us hear from each his judgment 
upon it.” 

Solemn and weighty were the opinions delivered. 
One brother thought that Mr. Grey had plenty of 
work to do at home without going off on a wild-goose 
chase after the heathen folk of the wilderness. His 
church needed him ; to leave it thus would be a shame- 
ful neglect of duty. 

Another thought that the Indians were descendants 
of the ten lost tribes of Israel, and as such should be 
left in the hands of God. To attempt to evangelize 
them was to fly in the face of Providence. 

Another thought the same ; but then, how about 


42 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


that vision of Mr. Grey? He couldn’t get around 
that vision. 

I don’t know, brethren, I don’t know ! ” he con- 
cluded, shaking his head. 

Still another declared positively for Mr. Grey. The 
good people of the colonies owed it to the savages to 
do something for their religious enlightenment. It 
was wrong that so little had been done. They had 
taken their land from them, they had pushed them 
back into the wilds at the point of the sword ; now let 
them try to save their souls. This man had been 
plainly called of God to be an apostle to the Indi- 
ans ; the least that they could do was to bid him 
Godspeed and let him go. 

So it went on. At length the venerable chairman, 
who had twice turned the hour-glass upon the table 
before him, rose to close the discussion. His speech 
was a singular mixture of shrewdness, benevolence, 
and superstition. 

He said that, as Christians, they certainly owed a 
duty to the Indians, — a duty that had not been per- 
formed. Mr. Grey wished to help fulfil that neg- 
lected obligation, and would go at his own expense. 
It would not cost the church a shilling. His vision 
was certainly a revelation of the will of the Lord, and 
he dared not stand in the way. 

A vote was taken, and the majority were found to 
be in favor of ordination. The chairman pronounced 
himself pleased, and Mr. Grey was recalled and in- 
formed of the result. 

^‘I thank you,” he said simply, with a glad and 
grateful smile. 

“ Now, brethren,” said the worthy chairman with 


THE COUNCIL OF ORDINATION. 43 

much unction, the hour of dinner is nigh at hand, 
and the good people of this place have prepared en- 
tertainment for us ; so we will e’en put off the cere- 
mony of ordination till the afternoon. Let us look to 
the Lord for his blessing, and be dismissed.” 

And so with a murmur of talk and comment the 
council broke up, its members going to the places 
where they were to be entertained. Happy was the 
man who returned to his home accompanied by a 
minister, while those not so fortunate were fain to be 
content with a lay delegate. Indeed, the hospitality 
of the settlement was so bounteous that the supply 
exceeded the demand. There were not enough 
visitors to go around; and more than one good 
housewife who had baked, boiled, and roasted all the 
day before was moved to righteous indignation at 
the sight of the good man of the house returning 
guestless from the meeting. 

Early in the afternoon entertainers and entertained 
gathered again at the meeting-house. Almost the 
entire country side was there, — old and young alike. 
The house was packed, for never before had that 
part of New England seen a man ordained to carry 
the gospel to the Indians. It occurred, too, in that 
dreary interval between the persecution of the Quak- 
ers and the persecution of the witches, and was 
therefore doubly welcome. 

When Cecil arrived, the throng made way rever- 
ently for him. Was he not going, perchance like the 
martyrs of old, to the fagot and the stake? To 
those who had long known him he seemed hardly 
like the same man. He was lifted to a higher plane, 
surrounded by an atmosphere of sanctity and hero- 


44 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


ism, and made sacred by the high mission given him 
of God, to which was now to be added the sanction 
of holy men. 

So they made way for him, as the Florentines had 
made way for il Frate ” and as the people of God had 
made way for Francis Xavier when he left them to 
stir the heart of the East with his eloquence, and, 
alas ! to die on the bleak sea-coast of China, clasping 
the crucifix to his breast and praying for those who 
had cast him out. 

Cecil’s face, though pale, was calm and noble. All 
his nature responded to the moral grandeur of the 
occasion. It would be difficult to put into words the 
reverent and tender exaltation of feeling that ani- 
mated him that day. Perhaps only those upon whose 
own heads the hands of ordination have been laid 
can enter into or understand it. 

The charge was earnest, but it was not needed, for 
Cecil’s ardent enthusiasm went far beyond all that the 
speaker urged upon him. As he listened, pausing as 
it were on the threshold of an unknown future, he 
wondered if he should ever hear a sermon again, — 
he, so soon to be swallowed by darkness, swept, self- 
yielded, into the abyss of savagery. 

Heartfelt and touching was the prayer of ordina- 
tion, — that God might accept and bless Cecil’s con- 
secration, that the divine presence might always abide 
with him, that savage hearts might be touched and soft- 
ened, that savage lives might be lighted up through 
his instrumentality, and that seed might be sown in 
the wilderness which would spring up and cause the 
waste places to be glad and the desert to blossom as 
the rose. 


THE COUNCIL OF ORDINATION. 45 

^‘And so,” said the old minister, his voice faltering 
and his hands trembling as they rested on Cecil’s 
bowed head, “so we give him into Thine own hand 
and send him forth into the wilderness. Thou only 
knowest what is before him, whether it be a harvest 
of souls, or torture and death. But we know that, 
for the Christian, persecutions and trials are but 
stepping-stones leading to God ; yea, and that death 
itself is victory. And if he is faithful, we know that 
whatever his lot may be it will be glorious; that 
whatever the end may be, it will be but a door open- 
ing into the presence of the Most High.” 

Strong and triumphant rang the old man’s tones, as 
he closed his prayer committing Cecil into the hands 
of God. To him, as he listened, it seemed as if the 
last tie that bound him to New England was sev- 
ered, and he stood consecrated and anointed for his 
mission. When he raised his face, more than one of 
the onlookers thought of those words of the Book 
where it speaks of Stephen, — “ And they saw his face 
as it had been the face of an angel.” 

A psalm was sung, the benediction given, and the 
solemn service was over. It was long, however, be- 
fore the people left the house. They lingered around 
Cecil, bidding him farewell, for he was to go forth at 
dawn the next day upon his mission. They pressed 
his hand, some with warm words of sympathy, some 
silently and with wet eyes. Many affectionate words 
were said, for they had never known before how 
much they loved their pastor; and now he seemed 
no longer a pastor, but a martyr and a saint. More 
than one mother brought him her child to bless ; 
others — strangers from a distance — lifted their chih 


46 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

dren up, so that they could see him above the press, 
while they whispered to them that they must always 
remember that they had seen the good Mr. Grey, 
who was going far off into the west to tell the Indians 
about God. 

Long afterward, when nearly all that generation 
had passed away and the storm of the Revolution was 
beginning to gather over the colonies, there were a 
few aged men still living who sometimes told how, 
when they were children, they had seen Cecil Grey 
bidding the people farewell at the old meeting-house ; 
and through all the lapse of years they remembered 
what a wonderful brightness was on his face, and how 
sweet and kind were his words to each as he bade 
them good-by forever. 


INTO TRACKLESS WILDS. 


47 


CHAPTER V. 

INTO TRACKLESS WILDS. 

“ I will depart,” he said, “ the hour is come, 
And in the silence of yon sky I read 
My fated message flashing.” 


Edwin Arnold, 



HE next morning Cecil rose early after a sleep- 


less night. On that day he was to go out from 
all that was sweet and precious in life and take the 
path into the wilderness. At first his heart sank 
within him ; then his strength of purpose revived, and 
he was resolute again. 

He must go, and soon. The briefer the parting 
the briefer the pang. He had already bidden his 
friends good-by ; his parents were long since dead ; 
it only remained to part from the old Indian woman, 
his nurse in childhood, now his faithful house- 
keeper and the only inmate of his home. 

He went to the kitchen, — for usually at this hour 
she was up and preparing breakfast. She was not 
there, and the room looked cold and cheerless in the 
gray dawn. He went to her door and knocked; 
there was no response. He called her; the room 
was as still as death. Alarmed, he opened the door ; 
no one was within; she was gone, — had evidently 
been gone all night, for the bed was untouched. 

He was pained and bewildered at this desertion, 
for only the day before he had given her a paper 


48 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


legally drawn up, securing to her the little property he 
possessed and making her independent for the rest 
of her life. She had taken it, listened in silence to 
the kindly expressions that accompanied the gift, and 
turned away without a word. Now she was gone ; 
what could it mean? 

Slowly he made the simple preparations that were 
needed for the journey — putting a little food, his 
Bible, and other necessaries into a kind of knapsack 
and strapping it upon his back. Then taking his 
staff, he went out from his home, never to return. 

The sun was rising, the air was fresh and dewy, but 
his heart was sad. Yet through it ran a strange thrill 
of joy, a strange blending of pain and gladness. 

The parting is bitter, bitter almost unto death, but 
He will keep me,” murmured the white lips, as he 
went down the walk. 

The sound of voices fell on his ears, and he looked 
up. At the gate, awaiting him, was a group of his 
parishioners, who had come to look once more on 
the face of their pastor. One by whose bedside he 
had prayed in the hour of sickness ; another, whom 
his counsel had saved when direly tempted ; a little 
lame child, who loved him for his kindness ; and an 
aged, dim-sighted woman, to whom he had often read 
the Scriptures. 

He opened the gate and came out among them. 

God bless you, sir,” said the old woman, we 
wanted to see your bonny face again before you 
left us.” 

The little lame boy said nothing, but came up to 
Cecil, took his hand, and pressed it to his cheek in 
a manner more eloquent than words. 


INTO TRACKLESS WILDS. 


49 


Friends,” said Cecil, in a faltering voice, I 
thank you. It is very sweet to know that you care 
for me thus.” 

One by one they came and clasped his hand in 
tearful farewell. For each he had a loving word. It 
was an impressive scene, — the sorrow-stricken group, 
the pastor with his pale spiritual face full of calm re- 
solve, and around them the solemn hush of morning. 

When all had been spoken, the minister reverently 
uncovered his head ; the others did the same. “ It 
is for the last time,” he said ; let us pray.” 

After a few earnest words commending them to the 
care of God, he drew his hand gently from the lame 
boy’s cheek and rested it on his head in silent benedic- 
tion. Then giving them one last look of unutterable 
love, a look they never forgot, — 

Good-by,” he said softly, God bless you all.” 

‘‘Good-by, God bless you, sir,” came back in 
answer ; and they saw his face no more. 

One more farewell was yet to be said. The wind- 
ing path led close by the country graveyard. He 
entered it and knelt by the side of the new-made 
grave. Upon the wooden headboard was inscribed 
the name of her who slept beneath, — “ Ruth Grey.” 

He kissed the cold sod, his tears falling fast 
upon it. 

“ Forgive me,” he whispered, as if the dull ear of 
death could hear. “Forgive me for everything 
wherein I failed you. Forgive me, and — Farewell.” 

Again he was on his way. At the entrance to the 
wood he saw a figure sitting on a rock beside the 
path. As he drew nearer he observed it was clad in 
Indian garb, and evidently awaited his coming. Who 
4 


5 ° 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


was it? Might it not be some chief, who, having 
heard of his intended mission, had come forth to 
meet him? 

He hastened his steps. When he came nearer, he 
saw that it was only an Indian woman ; a little closer, 
and to his inexpressible astonishment he recognized 
his old nurse. 

“What does this mean?” he exclaimed. “What 
are you doing here, and in Indian garb, too ? ” 

She rose to her feet with simple, natural dignity. 

“ It means,” she said, “that I go with you. Was 
I not your nurse in childhood ? Did I not carry you 
in my arms then, and has not your roof sheltered me 
since ? Can I forsake him who is as my own child ? 
My heart has twined around you too long to be 
torn away. Your path shall be my path; we go 
together.” 

It was in vain that Cecil protested, reasoned, 
argued. 

“ I have spoken,” she said. “ I will not turn back 
from my words while life is left me.” 

He would have pleaded longer, but she threw a 
light pack upon her back and went on into the forest. 
She had made her decision, and he knew she would 
adhere to it with the inflexible obstinacy of her race. 

He could only follow her regretfully ; and yet he 
could not but be grateful for her loyalty. 

At the edge of the wood he paused and looked 
back. Before him lay the farms and orchards of the 
Puritans. Here and there a flock of sheep was be- 
ing driven from the fold into the pasture, and a girl, 
bucket in hand, was taking her way to the milking 
shed. From each farmhouse a column of smoke rose 



T HAVE spoke fi ; I will not 
J- turn back from my w^rds.’’'' 



INTO TRACKLESS WILDS. 


51 


into the clear air. Over all shone the glory of the 
morning sun. It was civilization ; it was New Eng- 
land; it was home. 

For a moment, the scene seemed literally to lay 
hold of him and pull him back. For a moment, all 
the domestic feelings, all the refinement in his nature, 
rose up in revolt against the rude contact with barbar- 
ism before him. It seemed as if he could not go on, 
as if he must go back. He shook like a leaf with the 
mighty conflict. 

“ My God ! ” he cried out, throwing up his arms 
with a despairing gesture, “ must I give up everything, 
everything? ” 

He felt his resolution giving way ; his gray eyes 
were dark and dilated with excitement and pain ; his 
long fingers twitched and quivered ; before he knew 
what he was doing, he was walking back toward the 
settlement. 

That brought him to himself ; that re-awakened the 
latent energy and decision of his character. 

. ‘‘ What ! shall I turn back from the very threshold 
of my work? God forgive me — never ! ” 

His delicate frame grew strong and hardy under the 
power of his indomitable spirit. Again his dauntless 
enthusiasm came back ; again he was the Apostle to 
the Indians. 

One long last look, and he disappeared in the 
shadows of the wood, passing forever from the ken 
of the white man; for only vague rumors floated 
back to the colonies from those mysterious wilds into 
which he had plunged. The strange and wondrous 
tale of his after-life New England never knew. 



BOOK 11. 


TJ/JE OPENING OF THE DRAMA. 


CHAPTER I. 

SHALL THE GREAT COUNCIL BE HELD? 

The comet bums the wings of night, 

And dazzles elements and spheres ; 

Then dies in beauty and a blaze of light 
Blown far through other years. 

Joaquin Miller. 

hundred years ago — as near as we can 
“*■ estimate the time from the dim and shadowy le- 
gends that have come down to us — the confederacy 
of the Wauna or Columbia was one of the most powerful 
the New World has ever seen. It was apparently not 
inferior to that of the Six Nations, or to the more 
transitory leagues with which Tecumseh or Pontiac 
stayed for a moment the onward march of the white 
man. It was a union of the Indian tribes of Oregon 
and Washington, with the Willamettes at the head, 
against their great hereditary enemies, the Nootkas, 
the Shoshones, and the Spokanes. 

Sonorous and picturesque was the language of the 
old Oregon Indians in telling the first white traders 
the story of the great alliance. 


54 the bridge of the gods. 

Once, long before my father’s time and before 
his father’s time, all the tribes were as one tribe and 
the Willamettes were tyee [chief]. The Willamettes 
were strong and none could stand against them. The 
heart of the Willamette was battle and his hand was 
blood. When he lifted his arm in war, his enemy’s 
lodge became ashes and his council silence and death. 

The war- trails of the Willamette went north and 
south and east, and there was no grass on them. He 
called the Chinook and Sound Indians, who were weak, 
his children, and the Yakima, Cayuse, and Wasco, 
who loved war, his brothers ; but he was elder brother. 
And the Spokanes and the Shoshones might fast and 
cut themselves with thorns and knives, and dance the 
medicine dance, and drink the blood of horses, but 
nothing could make their hearts as strong as the hearts 
of the Willamettes ; for the One up in the sky had told 
the old men and the dreamers that the Willamettes 
should be the strongest of all the tribes as long as the 
Bridge of the Gods should stand. That was their 
tomanowos» ” 

But whenever the white listener asked about this 
superstition of the bridge and the legend connected 
with it, the Indian would at once become uncommu- 
nicative, and say, ‘‘ You can’t understand,” or more 
frequently, I don’t know.” For the main difficulty 
in collecting these ancient tales — ‘‘old-man talk,” as 
the Siwashes call them — was, that there was much 
superstition interwoven with them ; and the Indians 
were so reticent about their religious beliefs, that if 
one was not exceedingly cautious, the lively, gesticu- 
lating talker of one moment was liable to become the 
personification of sullen obstinacy the next. 


SHALL THE GEE AT COUNCIL BE HELD? $5 

But if the listener was fortunate enough to strike 
the golden mean, being neither too anxious nor too 
indifferent, and if above all he had by the gift of 
bounteous muck-a~nmck [food] touched the chord 
to which the savage heart always responds, the Indian 
might go on and tell in broken English or crude 
Chinook the strange, dark legend of the bridge, which 
is the subject of our tale. 

At the time our story opens, this confederacy was 
at the height of its power. It was a rough-hewn, bar- 
barian realm, the most heterogeneous, the most rudi- 
mentary of alliances. The exact manner of its union, 
its laws, its extent, and its origin are all involved in the 
darkness which everywhere covers the history of Indian 
Oregon, — a darkness into which our legend casts 
but a ray of light that makes the shadows seem 
the denser. It gives us, however, a glimpse of the 
diverse and squalid tribes that made up the confed- 
eracy. This included the Canoe Indians ” of the 
Sound and of the Oregon sea-coast, whose flat heads, 
greasy squat bodies, and crooked legs were in marked 
contrast with their skill and dexterity in managing 
their canoes and fish-spears; the hardy Indians of 
the Willamette Valley and the Cascade Range ; and 
the bold, predatory riders of eastern Oregon and 
Washington, — buffalo hunters and horse tamers, pas- 
sionately fond, long before the advent of the white 
man, of racing and gambling. It comprised also 
the Okanogans, who disposed of their dead by tying 
them upright to a tree ; the Yakimas, who buried 
them under cairns of stone ; the Klickitats, who 
swathed them like mummies and laid them in low, 
rude huts on the mimalusef or death islands ” of 


56 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

the Columbia ; the Chinooks, who stretched them in 
canoes with paddles and fishing implements by their 
side ; and the Kalamaths, who burned them with the 
maddest saturnalia of dancing, howling, and leaping 
through the flames of the funeral pyre. Over sixty 
or seventy petty tribes stretched the wild empire, 
welded together by the pressure of common foes 
and held in the grasp of the hereditary war-chief of 
the Willamettes. 

The chiefs of the Willamettes had gathered on 
Wappatto Island, from time immemorial the council- 
ground of the tribes. The white man has changed 
its name to Sauvie’s ” Island ; but its wonderful 
beauty is unchangeable. Lying at the mouth of the 
Willamette River and extending for many miles down 
the Columbia, rich in wide meadows and crystal lakes, 
its interior dotted with majestic oaks and its shores 
fringed with cottonwoods, around it the blue and 
sweeping rivers, the wooded hills, and the far white 
snow peaks, — it is the most picturesque spot in 
Oregon. 

The chiefs were assembled in secret council, and 
only those of pure Willamette blood were present, 
for the question to be considered was not one to be 
known by even the most trusted ally. 

All the confederated tribes beyond the Cascade 
Range were in a ferment of rebellion. One of the 
petty tribes of eastern Oregon had recently risen up 
against the Willamette supremacy ; and after a short 
but bloody struggle, the insurrection had been put 
down and the rebels almost exterminated by the vic- 
torious Willamettes. 


SHALL THE GEE AT COUNCIL BE HELD? 57 

But it was known that the chief of the malcontents 
had passed from tribe to tribe before the strug- 
gle commenced, inciting them to revolt, and it was 
suspected that a secret league had been formed; 
though when matters came to a crisis, the confeder- 
ates, afraid to face openly the fierce warriors of the 
Willamette, had stood sullenly back, giving assistance 
to neither side. It was evident, however, that a spirit 
of angry discontent was rife among them. Threaten- 
ing language had been used by the restless chiefs be- 
yond the mountains ; braves had talked around the 
camp-fire of the freedom of the days before the yoke 
of the confederacy was known; and the gray old 
dreamers, with whom the mimaluse tillicums [dead 
people] talked, had said that the fall of the Willamettes 
was near at hand. 

The sachems of the Willamettes, advised of every- 
thing, were met in council in the soft Oregon spring- 
tide. They were gathered under the cottonwood 
trees, not far from the bank of the Columbia. The 
air was fresh with the scent of the waters, and the 
young leaves were just putting forth on the trees of 
council,” whose branches swayed gently in the breeze. 
Beneath them, their bronze faces more swarthy still 
as the dancing sunbeams fell upon them through the 
moving boughs, thirty sachems sat in close semi-circle 
before their great war-chief, Multnomah. 

It was a strange, a sombre assembly. The chiefs 
were for the most part tall, well-built men, warriors and 
hunters from their youth up. There was something 
fierce and haughty in their bearing, something mena- 
cing, violent, and lawless in their saturnine faces and 
black, glittering eyes. Most of them wore their hair 


58 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

long ; some plaited, others flowing loosely over their 
shoulders. Their ears were loaded with hiagua shells ; 
their dress was composed of buckskin leggings and 
moccasins, and a short robe of dressed skin that came 
from the shoulders to the knees, to which was added 
a kind of blanket woven of the wool of the mountain 
sheep, or an outer robe of skins or furs, stained vari- 
ous colors and always drawn close around the body 
when sitting or standing. Seated on rude mats of 
rushes, wrapped each in his outer blanket and doubly 
wrapped in Indian stoicism, the warriors were ranged 
before their chief. 

His garb did not differ from that of the others, ex- 
cept that his blanket was of the richest fur known to 
the Indians, so doubled that the fur showed on either 
side. His bare arms were clasped each with a rough 
band of gold ; his hair was cut short, in sign of 
mourning for his favorite wife, and his neck was 
adorned with a collar of large bear-claws, showing he 
had accomplished that proudest of all achievements 
for the Indian, — the killing of a grizzly. 

Until the last chief had entered the grove and 
taken his place in the semi-circle, Multnomah sat like 
a statue of stone. He leaned forward reclining on 
his bow, a fine unstrung weapon tipped with gold. 
He was about sixty years old, his form tall and stately, 
his brow high, his eyes black, overhung with shaggy 
gray eyebrows and piercing as an eagle’s. His dark, 
grandly impassive face, with its imposing regularity of 
feature, showed a penetration that read everything, a 
reserve that revealed nothing, a dominating power 
that gave strength and command to every line. The 
lip, the brow, the very grip of the hand on the bow 


SHALL THE GEE AT COUNCIL BE HELD? 59 

told of a despotic temper and an indomitable will. 
The glance that flashed out from this reserved and 
resolute face — sharp, searching, and imperious — 
may complete the portrait of Multnomah, the silent, 
the secret, the terrible. 

When the last late-entering chief had taken his 
place, Multnomah rose and began to speak, using 
the royal language \ for like the Cayuses and several 
other tribes of the Northwest, the Willamettes had 
two languages, — the common, for every-day use, and 
the royal, spoken only by the chiefs in council. 

In grave, strong words he laid before them the 
troubles that threatened to break up the confederacy 
and his plan for meeting them. It was to send out 
runners calling a council of all the tribes, including 
the doubtful allies, and to try before them and ex- 
ecute the rebellious chief, who had been taken alive 
and was now reserved for the torture. Such a coun- 
cil, with the terrible warning of the rebel’s death 
enacted before it, would awe the malcontents into 
submission or drive them into open revolt. Long 
enough had the allies spoken with two tongues ; long 
enough had they smoked the peace-pipe with both 
the Willamettes and their enemies. They must come 
now to peace that should be peace, or to open war. 
The chief made no gestures, his voice did not vary 
its stern, deliberate accents from first to last \ but 
there was an indefinable something in word and 
manner that told how his warlike soul thirsted for 
battle, how the iron resolution, the ferocity beneath 
his stoicism, burned with desire of vengeance. 

There was perfect attention while he spoke, — not 
so much as a glance or a whisper aside. When he 


6o 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


had ceased and resumed his seat, silence reigned for 
a little while. Then Tla-wau-wau, chief of the Klac- 
kamas, a sub-tribe of the Willamette, rose. He laid 
aside his outer robe, leaving bare his arms and shoul- 
ders, which were deeply scarred; for Tla-wau-wau 
was a mighty warrior, and as such commanded. With 
measured deliberation he spoke in the royal tongue. 

“ Tla-wau-wau has seen many winters, and his hair 
is very gray. Many times has he watched the grass 
spring up and grow brown and wither, and the snows 
come and go, and those things have brought him wis- 
dom, and what he has seen of life and death has given 
him strong thoughts. It is not well to leap headlong 
into a muddy stream, lest there be rocks under the 
black water. Shall we call the tribes to meet us here 
on the island of council? When they are all gath- 
ered together they are more numerous than we. Is 
it wise to call those that are stronger than ourselves 
into our wigwam, when their hearts are bitter against 
us? Who knows what plots they might lay, or how 
suddenly they might fall on us at night or in the day 
when we were unprepared? Can we trust them? 
Does not the Klickitat’s name mean * he that steals 
horses ’ ? The Yakima would smoke the peace-pipe 
with the knife that was to stab you hid under his 
blanket. The Wasco’s heart is a lie, and his tongue 
is a trap. 

No, let us wait. The tribes talk great swelling 
words now and their hearts are hot, but if we wait, 
the fire will die down and the words grow small. Then 
we can have a council and be knit together again. 
Let us wait till another winter has come and gone ; 
then let us meet in council, and the tribes will listen. 


SHALL THE GEE AT COUNCIL BE HELD? 6 1 

“ Tla-wau-wau says, ' wait, and all will be well.’ ” 

His earnest, emphatic words ended, the chief took 
his seat and resumed his former look of stolid indiffer- 
ence. A moment before he had been all animation, 
every glance and gesture eloquent with meaning ; now 
he sat seemingly impassive and unconcerned. 

There was another pause. It was so still that the 
rustling of the boughs overhead was startlingly dis- 
tinct. Saving the restless glitter of black eyes, it was 
a tableau of stoicism. Then another spoke, advising 
caution, setting forth the danger of plunging into a 
contest with the allies. Speaker followed speaker in 
the same strain. 

As they uttered the words counselling delay, the 
glance of the war-chief grew ever brighter, and his grip 
upon the bow on which he leaned grew harder. But 
the cold face did not relax a muscle. At length rose 
Mishlah the Cougar, chief of the Mollalies. His was 
one of the most singular faces there. His tangled 
hair fell around a sinister, bestial countenance, all 
scarred and seamed by wounds received in battle. 
His head was almost flat, running back from his 
eyebrows so obliquely that when he stood erect he 
seemed to have no forehead at all ; while the back and 
lower part of his head showed an enormous develop- 
ment, — a development that was all animal. He knew 
nothing but battle, and was one of the most dreaded 
warriors of the Willamettes. 

He spoke, — not in the royal language, as did the 
others, but in the common dialect, the only one of 
which he was master. 

My heart is as the heart of Multnomah. Mishlah 
is hungry for war. If the tribes that are our younger 


62 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS, 


brothers are faithful, they will come to the council 
and smoke the pipe of peace with us; if they are 
not, let us know it. Mishlah knows not what it is to 
wait. You all talk words, words, words; and the 
tribes laugh and say, ‘The Willamettes have be- 
come women and sit in the lodge sewing moccasins 
and are afraid to fight.’ Send out the runners. Call 
the council. Let us find who are our enemies ; then 
let us strike ! ” 

The hands of the chief closed involuntarily as if 
they clutched a weapon, and his voice rang harsh and 
grating. The eyes of Multnomah fiashed fire, and 
the war-lust kindled for a moment on the dark faces 
of the listeners. 

Then rose the grotesque figure of an Indian, an- 
cient, withered, with matted locks and haggard face, 
who had just joined the council, gliding in noiselessly 
from the neighboring wood. His cheek-bones were 
unusually high, his lower lip thick and protruding, his 
eyes deeply sunken, his face drawn, austere, and dis- 
mal beyond description. The mis-shapen, degraded 
features repelled at first sight ; but a second glance 
revealed a great dim sadness in the eyes, a gloomy 
foreboding on brow and lip that were weirdly fasci- 
nating, so sombre were they, so full of woe. There 
was a wild dignity in his mien ; and he wore the robe 
of furs, though soiled and torn, that only the richest 
chiefs were able to wear. Such was Tohomish, or 
Pine Voice, chief of the Santiam tribe of the Willa- 
mettes, the most eloquent orator and potent medicine 
or tomanowos man in the confederacy. 

There was a perceptible movement of expectation, 
a lighting up of faces as he arose, and a shadow of 


SHALL THE GREA T COUNCIL BE HELD ? 63 

anxiety swept over Multnomah’s impassive features. 
For this man’s eloquence was wonderful, and his soft 
magnetic tones could sway the passions of his hearers 
to his will with a power that seemed more than human 
to the superstitious Indians. Would he declare for 
the council or against it ; for peace or for war ? 

He threw back the tangled locks that hung over 
his face, and spoke. 

Chiefs and warriors, who dwell in lodges and talk 
with men, Tohomish, who dwells in caves and talks 
with the dead, says greeting, and by him the dead 
send greeting also.” 

His voice was wonderfully musical, thrilling, and 
pathetic ; and as he spoke the salutation from the 
dead, a shudder went through the wild audience 
before him, — through all but Multnomah, who 
did not shrink nor drop his searching eyes from 
the speaker’s face. What cared he for the saluta- 
tion of the living or the dead? Would this man 
whose influence was so powerful declare for action 
or delay? 

It has been long since Tohomish has stood in the 
light of the sun and looked on the faces of his broth- 
ers or heard their voices. Other faces has he looked 
upon and other voices has he heard. He has learned 
the language of the birds and the trees, and has talked 
with the People of Old who dwell in the serpent and 
the cayote ; and they have taught him their secrets. 
But of late terrible things have come to Tohomish.” 

He paused, and the silence was breathless, for the 
Indians looked on this man as a seer to whom the 
future was as luminous as the past. But Multno- 
mah’s brow darkened; he felt that Tohomish also 


64 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


was against him, and the soul of the warrior rose up 
stern and resentful against the prophet. 

A few suns ago, as I wandered in the forest by 
the Santiam, I heard the death-wail in the distance. 
I said, ‘ Some one is dead, and that is the cry of the 
mourners. I will go and lift up my voice with them.’ 
But as I sought them up the hill and through the 
thickets the cry grew fainter and farther, till at last it 
died out amid distant rocks and crags. And then I 
knew that I had heard no human voice lamenting the 
dead, but that it was the Spirit Indian-of-the-Wood 
wailing for the living whose feet go down to the dark- 
ness and whose faces the sun shall soon see no more. 
Then my heart grew heavy and bitter, for I knew that 
woe had come to the Willamettes. 

“ I went to my den in the mountains, and sought 
to know of those that dwell in the night the meaning 
of this. I built the medicine-fire, I fasted, I refused 
to sleep. Day and night I kept the fire burning ; 
day and night I danced the tomanowos dance around 
the fiames, or leaped through them, singing the song 
that brings the Spee-ough, till at last the life went 
from my limbs and my head grew sick and every- 
thing was a whirl of fire. Then I knew that the 
power was on me, and I fell, and all grew black. 

I dreamed a dream. 

I stood by the death-trail that leads to the spirit- 
land. The souls of those who had just died were 
passing ; and as I gazed, the wail I had heard in the 
forest came back, but nearer than before. And as 
the wail sounded, the throng on the death-trail grew 
thicker and their tread swifter. The warrior passed 
with his bow in his hand and his quiver swinging from 


SnALL THE GEE AT COUNCIL BE HELD? 65 

his shoulder ; the squaw followed with his food upon 
her back; the old tottered by. It was a whole 
people on the way to the spirit-land. But when I 
tried to see their faces, to know them, if they were 
Willamette or Shoshone or our brother tribes, I could 
not. But the wail grew ever louder and the dead 
grew ever thicker as they passed. Then it all faded 
out, and I slept. When I awoke, it was night ; the 
fire had burned into ashes and the medicine wolf was 
howling on the hills. The voices that are in the air 
came to me and said, ‘ Go to the council and tell 
what you have seen ; * but I refused, and went far 
into the wood to avoid them. But the voices would 
not let me rest, and my spirit burned within me, and 
I came. Beware of the great council. Send out no 
runners. Call not the tribes together. Voices and 
omens and dreams tell Tohomish of something ter- 
rible to come. The trees whisper it ; it is in the air, 
in the waters. It has made my spirit bitter and 
heavy until my drink seems blood and my food has 
the taste of death. Warriors, Tohomish has shown 
his heart. His words are ended.’* 

He resumed his seat and drew his robe about him, 
muffling the lower part of his face. The matted hair 
fell once more over his drooping brow and repul- 
sive countenance, from which the light faded the mo- 
ment he ceased to speak. Again the silence was pro- 
found. The Indians sat spell-bound, charmed by the 
mournful music of the prophet’s voice and awed by 
the dread vision he had revealed. All the supersti- 
tion within them was aroused. When Tohomish took 
his seat, every Indian was ready to oppose the calling 
of the council with all his might. Even Mishlah, as 
5 


66 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


superstitious as blood-thirsty, was startled and per- 
plexed. The war-chief stood alone. 

He knew it, but it only made his despotic will the 
stronger. Against the opposition of the council and 
the warning of Tohomish, against tomanowos and 
Spee-oughy ominous as they were even to him, rose up 
the instinct which was as much a part of him as life 
itself, — the instinct to battle and to conquer. He 
was resolved with all the grand strength of his nature 
to bend the council to his will, and with more than 
Indian subtility saw how it might be done. 

He rose to his feet and stood for a moment in 
silence, sweeping with his glance the circle of chiefs. 
As he did so, the mere personality of the man began 
to produce a reaction. For forty years he had been 
the great war-chief of the tribes of the Wauna, and 
had never known defeat. The ancient enemies of 
his race dreaded him ; the wandering bands of the 
prairies had carried his name far and wide ; and even 
beyond the Rockies, Sioux and Pawnee had heard 
rumors of the powerful chief by the Big River of the 
West. He stood before them a huge, stern warrior, 
himself a living assurance of victory and dominion. 

As was customary with Indian orators in preparing 
the way for a special appeal, he began to recount the 
deeds of the fathers, the valor of the ancient heroes 
of the race. His stoicism fell from him as he half 
spoke, half chanted the harangue. The passion that 
was burning within him made his words like pictures, 
so vivid they were, and thrilled his tones with electric 
power. As he went on, the sullen faces of his hearers 
grew animated ; the superstitious fears that Tohomish 
had awakened fell from them. Again they were 


SHALL THE GEE AT COUNCIL BE HELD? 67 


warriors, and their blood kindled and their pulses 
throbbed to the words of their invincible leader. He 
saw it, and began to speak of the battles they them- 
selves had fought and the victories they had gained. 
More than one dark cheek flushed darker and more 
than one hand moved unconsciously to the knife. He 
alluded to the recent war and to the rebellious tribe 
that had been destroyed. 

‘‘ That^'' said he, was the people Tohomish saw 
passing over the death-trail in his dream. What 
wonder that the thought of death should fill the air, 
when we have slain a whole people at a single blow ! 
Do we not know too that their spirits would try to 
frighten our dreamers with omens and bad tomano- 
wos ? Was it not bad tomanowos that Tohomish saw? 
It could not have come from the Great Spirit, for 
he spoke to our fathers and said that we should be 
strongest of all the tribes as long as the Bridge of the 
Gods should stand. Have the stones of that bridge 
begun to crumble, that our hearts should grow 
weak? ” 

He then described the natural bridge which, as tra- 
dition and geology alike tell us, spanned at that time 
the Columbia at the Cascades. The Great Spirit, he 
declared, had spoken ; and as he had said, so it would 
be. Dreams and omens were mist and shadow, but 
the bridge was rock, and the word of the Great Spirit 
stood forever. On this tradition the chief dwelt with 
tremendous force, setting against the superstition that 
Tohomish had roused the still more powerful super- 
stition of the bridge, — a superstition so interwoven 
with every thought and hope of the Willamettes that 
it had become a part of their character as a tribe. 


68 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


And now when their martial enthusiasm and fa- 
talistic courage were all aglow, when the recital of 
their fathers’ deeds had stirred their blood and the 
portrayal of their own victories filled them again with 
the fierce joy of conflict, when the mountain of stone 
that arched the Columbia had risen before them in 
assurance of dominion as eternal as itself, — now, 
when in every eye gleamed desire of battle and every 
heart was aflame, the chief made (and it was charac- 
teristic of him) in one terse sentence his crowning 
appeal, — 

Chiefs, speak your heart. Shall the runners be 
sent out to call the council?” 

There was a moment of intense silence. Then a 
low, deep murmur of consent came from the excited 
listeners; a half-smothered war-cry burst from the 
lips of Mishlah, and the victory was won. 

One only sat silent and apart, his robe drawn 
close, his head bent down, seemingly oblivious of 
all around him, as if resigned to inevitable doom. 

‘‘ To-morrow at dawn, while the light is yet young, 
the runners will go out. Let the chiefs meet here 
in the grove to hear the message given them to be 
carried to the tribes. The talk is ended.” 


THE WAR-CHIEF AHD THE SEER. 69 


CHAPTER II. 

THE WAR-CHIEF AND THE SEER. 

Cassandra’s wild voice prophesying woe. 

Philip Bourke Marston, 

'^HE war-chief left the grove as soon as he had 
“*■ dismissed the council. Tohomish went with 
him. For some distance they walked together, the 
one erect and majestic, the other gliding like a 
shadow by his side. 

At length Multnomah stopped under a giant cotton- 
wood and looked sternly at Tohomish. 

“ You frightened the council to-day with bad mim- 
aluse [death] talk. Why did you do it? Why did 
you bring into a council of warriors dreams fit only 
for old men that lie sleeping in the sun by the door 
of the wigwam ? ” 

I said what my eyes saw and my ears heard, and 
it was true.” 

It cannot be true, for the Great Spirit has said 
that the Willamettes shall rule the tribes as long as 
the bridge shall stand ; and how can it fall when it 
is a mountain of stone ? ” 

A strange expression crossed Tohomish’s sullen 
face. 

Multnomah, beware how you rest on the prophecy 
of the bridge. Lean not your hand on it, for it is 


70 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

as if you put it forth to lean it on a coiled rattle- 
snake.” 

^‘Your sayings are dark,” replied the chief impa- 
tiently. Speak plainly.” 

Tohomish shook his head, and the gloomy look 
habitual to him came back. 

I cannot. Dreams and omens I can tell, but the 
secret of the bridge is the secret of the Great Spirit ; 
and I cannot tell it lest he become angry and take 
from me my power of moving men with burning 
words.” 

The secret of the Great Spirit ! What black 
thing is it you are hiding and covering up with words ? 
Bring it forth into the light, that I may see it.” 

No, it is my tomanowos. Were I to tell it the 
gift of eloquence would go from me, the fire would 
die from my heart and the words from my lips, and 
my life would wither up within me.” 

Multnomah was silent. Massive and commanding 
as was his character he was still an Indian, and the 
words of the seer had touched the latent superstition 
in his nature. They referred to that strongest and 
most powerful of all the strange beliefs of the Oregon 
savages, — the spirit possession or devil worship of 
the tomanowos. 

As soon as an Oregon Indian was old enough to 
aspire to a place among the braves, he was sent 
into the hills alone. There he fasted, prayed, and 
danced, chanted the medicine-chant, and cut him- 
self with knife or thorn till he fell exhausted to the 
ground. Whatever he saw then, in waking delirium 
or feverish sleep, was the charm that was to control 
his future. Be it bird or beast, dream or mystic rev- 


THE WAR-CHIEF AND THE SEER. 7 1 

elation, it was his totem or tomanowos^ and gave him 
strength, cunning, or swiftness, sometimes knowl- 
edge of the future, imparting to him its own charac- 
teristics. But what it was, its name or nature, was 
the one secret that must go with him to his grave. 
Woe unto him if he told the name of his totem. In 
that moment it would desert him, taking from him all 
strength and power, leaving him a shattered wreck, 
an outcast from camp and war-party. 

Multnomah says well that it is a black secret, but 
it is my totem and may not be told. For many win- 
ters Tohomish has carried it in his breast, till its pois- 
oned sap has filled his heart with bitterness, till for 
him gladness and warmth have gone out of the light, 
laughter has grown a sob of pain, and sorrow and 
death have become what the feast, the battle, and the 
chase are to other men. It is the black secret, the 
secret of the coming trouble, that makes Tohomish’s 
voice like the voice of a pine ; so that men say it has 
in it sweetness and mystery and haunting woe, moving 
the heart as no other can. And if he tells the secret, 
eloquence and life go with it. Shall Tohomish tell 
it? Will Multnomah listen while Tohomish shows 
what is to befall the bridge and the Willamettes in 
the time that is to come ? ” 

The war-chief gazed at him earnestly. In that 
troubled, determined look, superstition struggled for 
a moment and then gave way to the invincible 
obstinacy of his resolve. 

No. Multnomah knows that his own heart is 
strong and will not fail him, come what may j and 
that is all he cares to know. If you told me, the 
tomanowos would be angry, and drain your spirit 


72 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


from you and cast you aside as the serpent casts its 
skin. And you must be the most eloquent of all at 
the great council; for there the arm of Multnomah 
and the voice of Tohomish must bend the bad chiefs 
before them.” 

His accents had the same undertone of arbitrary 
will, of inflexible determination, that had been in 
them when he spoke in the council. Though the 
shadows fell more and more ominous and threatening 
across his path, to turn back did not occur to him. 
The stubborn tenacity of the man could not let go his 
settled purpose. 

‘‘Tohomish will be at the council and speak for 
his chief and his tribe ? ” asked Multnomah, in a tone 
that was half inquiry, half command; for the seer 
whose mysterious power as an orator gave him 
so strong an influence over the Indians must be 
there. 

Tohomish’s haggard and repulsive face had settled 
back into the look of mournful apathy habitual to him. 
He had not, since the council, attempted to change 
the chiefs decision by a single word, but seemed to 
have resigned himself with true Indian fatalism to that 
which was to ’come. 

“Tohomish will go to the council,” he said in 
those soft and lingering accents, indescribably sweet 
and sad, with which his degraded face contrasted so 
strongly. “ Yes, he will go to the council, and his 
voice shall bend and turn the hearts of men as never 
before. Strong will be the words that he shall say, for 
with him it will be sunset and his voice will be heard 


no more. 


THE WAR-CHIEF AND THE SEER, 73 


‘‘ Where will you go when the council is ended, that 
we shall see you no more?” asked Multnomah. 

On the death-trail to the spirit-land, — nor will 
I go alone,” was the startling reply; and the seer 
glided noiselessly away and disappeared among the 
trees. 


74 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


CHAPTER III. 

WALLULAH. 

Ne’er was seen 

In art or nature, aught so passing sweet 
As was the form that in its beauteous frame 
Inclosed her, and is scattered now in dust. 

Carey : Dante. 

ly TULTNOMAH passed on to seek the lodge of 
his daughter Wallulah, a half Asiatic, and the 
most beautiful woman in all the land of the Wauna. 

Reader, would you know the tale of the fair ori- 
ental of whom was born the sweet beauty of Wallulah ? 

Eighteen years before the time of our story, an 
East Indian ship was wrecked on the Columbia bar, 
the crew and cargo falling into the hands of the 
Indians. Among the rescued was a young and ex- 
ceedingly lovely woman, who was hospitably enter- 
tained by the chief of the tribe. He and his people 
were deeply impressed by the grace of the fair 
stranger, whose dainty beauty won for her the name 
of Sea- Flower,” because the sea, that is ever drift- 
ing weeds, had for once wafted a flower to the shore. 

As she sat on the mat in the rude bark lodge, the 
stern chief softened his voice, trying to talk with 
her ; the uncouth women gently stroked her long soft 
hair, and some of the bolder and more curious 
touched her white hands wonderingly, while the 
throng of dusky faces pressed close round the pale. 


WALLULAH. 75 

sweet creature whose eyes looked at them with a 
deep, dumb woe they could not understand. 

When she had become familiar with the Willamette 
tongue, she told them that she was the daughter of a 
chief far away across the great water, who ruled a 
country as broad as the land of the Wauna and far 
richer. He had sent her as a bride to the ruler of 
another land, with a fabulous dowry of jewels and 
a thousand gifts besides. But the ship that bore her 
and her splendid treasures had been turned from its 
course by a terrible storm. Day after day it was 
driven through a waste of blackness and foam, — the 
sails rent, the masts swept away, the shattered hulk 
hurled onward like a straw by the fury of the wind. 
When the tempest had spent itself, they found them- 
selves in a strange sea under strange stars. Compass 
and chart were gone ; they knew not where they 
were, and caught in some unknown current, they 
could only drift blindly on and on. Never sighting 
land, seeing naught but the everlasting sweep of wave 
and sky, it began to be whispered in terror that this 
ocean had no further shore, that they might sail on 
forever, seeing nothing but the boundless waters. At 
length, when the superstitious sailors began to talk of 
throwing their fair charge overboard as an offering to 
the gods, the blue peaks of the Coast Range rose out 
of the water, and the ever rain-freshened green of the 
Oregon forests dawned upon them. Then came the 
attempt to enter the Columbia, and the wreck on 
the bar.^ 

1 Shipwrecks of Asiatic vessels are not uncommon on the Pacific 
Coast, several having occurred during the present century, — notably 
that of a Japanese junk in 1833, from which three passengers were 


76 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS, 


Multnomah made the lovely princess his wife, and 
Sea-Flower showed the spirit of a queen. She 
tried to introduce among the Indians something of 
the refinement of her oriental home. From her the 
degraded medicine -men and dreamers caught a gleam 
of the majestic lore of Buddha ; to the chiefs-in-coun- 
cil she taught something of the grave, inexorable 
justice of the East, that seemed like a higher devel- 
opment of their own grim unwritten code. Her in- 
fluence was very great, for she was naturally eloquent 
and of noble presence. More than one sachem felt 
the inspiration of better, purer thoughts than he had 
ever known before when the war-chiefs woman ” 
spoke in council. Strange gatherings were those : 
blood-stained chiefs and savage warriors listening all 
intent to the sweetest of Indian tongues spoken 
in modulations that were music ; the wild heart of 
the empire stirred by the perfumed breath of a 
woman ! 

She had died three years before the events we 
have been narrating, and had left to her daughter 
the heritage of her refinement and her beauty. 

saved at the hands of the Indians ; while the cases of beeswax that 
have been disinterred on the sea-coast, the oriental words that are found 
ingrafted in the native languages, and the Asiatic type of countenance 
shown by many of the natives, prove such wrecks to have been frequent 
in prehistoric times. One of the most romantic stories of the Oregon 
coast is that which the Indians tell of a buried treasure at Mount Ne- 
halem, left there generations ago by shipwrecked men of strange garb 
and curious arms, — treasure which, like that of Captain Kidd, has been 
often sought but never found. There is also an Indian legend of a ship- 
wrecked white man named Soto, and his comrades (See Mrs. Victor’s 
“Oregon and Washington”), who lived long with the mid-Columbia 
Indians and then left them to seek some settlement of their own people 
in the south. All of these legends point to the not infrequent occur- 
rence oi such a wreck as our story describes. 


WALLULAH. 


77 


Wallulah was the only child of the war-chief and 
his Asiatic wife, the sole heir of her father’s 
sovereignty. 

Two miles from the council grove, in the interior 
of the island, was Wallulah’s lodge. The path that 
Multnomah took led through a pleasant sylvan lawn. 
The grass was green, and the air full of the scent of buds 
and flowers. Here and there a butterfly floated like 
a sunbeam through the woodland shadows, and a 
humming-bird darted in winged beauty from bloom 
to bloom. The lark’s song came vibrating through 
the air, and in the more open spaces innumerable birds 
flew twittering in the sun. The dewy freshness, the 
exquisite softness of spring, was ever5^here. 

In the golden weather, through shadowed wood and 
sunny opening, the war-chief sought his daughter’s 
lodge. 

Suddenly a familiar sound attracted his attention, 
and he turned toward it. A few steps, and he came 
to the margin of a small lake. Several snow-white 
swans were floating on it ; and near the edge of the 
water, but concealed from the swans by the tall reeds 
that grew along the shore, was his daughter, watching 
them. 

She was attired in a simple dress of some oriental 
fabric. Her form was small and delicately moulded ; 
her long black hair fell in rich masses about her 
shoulders ; and her profile, turned toward him, was 
sweetly feminine. The Indian type showed plainly, 
but was softened with her mother’s grace. Her face 
was sad, with large appealing eyes and mournful lips, 
and full of haunting loveliness ; a face whose strange 
moumfulness was deepened by ^he splendor of its 


78 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


beauty ; a face the like of which is rarely seen, but 
once seen can never be forgotten. 

There was something despondent even in her pose, 
as she sat with her shoulders drooping slightly for- 
ward and her dark eyes fixed absently on the swans, 
watching them through the bending reeds. Now one 
uttered its note, and she listened, seeming to vibrate 
to the deep, plaintive cry ; then she raised to her 
lips a flute that she held in her hands, and answered it 
with a perfect intonation, — an intonation that breathed 
the very spirit of the swan. So successful was the 
mimicry that the swans replied, thinking it the cry 
of a hidden mate ; and again she softly, rhythmically 
responded. 

“ Wallulah ! said the chief. 

She sprang to her feet and turned toward him. 
Her dark face lighted with an expressive flash, her 
black eyes shone, her features glowed with joy and 
surprise. It was like the breaking forth of an inner 
illumination. There was now nothing of the Indian 
in her face. 

‘‘ My father ! ” she exclaimed, springing to him and 
kissing his hand, greeting him as her mother had 
taught her to do from childhood. Welcome ! Were 
you searching for me?” 

“ Yes, you were well hidden, but Multnomah is a 
good hunter and can always track the fawn to its 
covert,” replied the chief, with the faint sem- 
blance of a smile. All that there was of gentle- 
ness in his nature came out when talking with his 
daughter. 

“ You have come from the council ? Are you not 
weary and hungry? Come to the lodge, and let Wal- 


WALLULAH. 79 

lulah give you food, and spread a mat for you to rest 
upon.” 

‘*No, I am hungry only to see Wallulah and hear 
her talk. Sit down on the log again.” She seated 
herself, and her father stood beside her with an ab- 
stracted gaze, his hand stroking her long, soft tresses. 
He was thinking of the darker, richer tresses of another, 
whose proud, sad face and mournful eyes with their 
wistful meaning, so like Wallulah’s own, he, a barbarian 
prince, could never understand. 

Although, according to the superstitious custom of 
the Willamettes, he never spoke the name of Sea- 
Flower or alluded to her in any way, he loved his 
lost wife with a deep and unchanging affection. She 
had been a fair frail thing whose grace and refine- 
ment perplexed and fascinated him, moving him to 
unwonted tenderness and yearning. He had brought 
to her the spoils of the chase and of battle. The 
finest mat was braided for her lodge, the choicest 
skins and furs spread for her bed, and the chieftain- 
ess’s string of htagua shells and grizzly bear’s claws 
had been put around her white neck by Multnomah’s 
own hand. In spite of all this, she drooped and 
saddened year by year ; the very hands that sought 
to cherish her seemed but to bruise ; and she sick- 
ened and died, the delicate woman, in the arms of 
the iron war-chief, like a flower in the grasp of a 
mailed hand. 

Why did she die ? Why did she always seem so 
sad? Why did she so often steal away to weep over 
her child? Was not the best food hers, and the 
warm place by the lodge fire, and the softest bear- 
skin to rest on ; and was she not the wife of Multno- 


8o 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


mah, — the big chief’s woman? Why then should 
she droop and die like a winged bird that one tries 
to tame by tying it to the wigwam stake and tossing 
it food? 

Often the old chief brooded over these questions, 
but it was unknown to all, even to Wallulah. Only 
his raven tresses, cut close year by year in sign of 
perpetual mourning, told that he had not forgotten, 
could never forget. 

The swans had taken flight, and their long lingering 
note sounded faint in the distance. 

You have frightened away my swans,” said Wallu- 
lah, looking up at him smilingly. 

A shadow crossed his brow. 

“Wallulah,” he said, and his voice had now the 
stem ring habitual to it, “you waste your life with 
the birds and trees and that thing of sweet sounds,” 

— pointing to the flute. “ Better be learning to think 
on the things a war- chief s daughter should care for, 

— the feast and the council, the war-parties and the 
welcome to the braves when they come back to the 
camp with the spoil.” 

The bright look died out of her face. 

“ You say those words so often,” she replied sor- 
rowfully, “and I try to obey, but cannot. War is 
terrible to me.” 

His countenance grew harsher, his hand ceased to 
stroke her hair. 

“And has Multnomah, chief of the Willamettes 
and war-chief of the Wauna, lived to hear his daugh- 
ter say that war is terrible to her? Have you noth- 
ing of your father in you? Remember the tales of 
the brave women of Multnomah’s race, — the women 


WALLULAH. 


8i 


whose blood is in your veins. Remember that they 
spoke burning words in the council, and went forth 
with the men to battle, and came back with their own 
garments stained with blood. You shudder 1 Is it 
at the thought of blood ? ” 

The old wistful look came back, the old sadness 
was on the beautiful face again. One could see now 
why it was there. 

“My father,” she said sorrowfully, “Wallulah has 
tried to love those things, but she cannot. She can- 
not change the heart the Great Spirit has given her. 
She cannot bring herself to be a woman of battle any 
more than she can sound a war-cry on her flute,” and 
she lifted it as she spoke. 

He took it into his own hands. 

“ It is this,” he said, breaking down the sensitive 
girl in the same despotic way in which he bent the 
wills of warriors ; “ it is this that makes you weak. 
Is it a charm that draws the life from your heart? If 
so, it can be broken.” 

Another moment and the flute would have been 
broken in his ruthless hands and its fragments flung 
into the lake ; but Wallulah, startled, caught it from 
him with a plaintive cry. 

“It was my mother’s. If you break it you will 
break my heart ! ” 

The chiefs angry features quivered at the mention 
of her mother, and he instantly released the flute. 
Wallulah clasped it to her bosom as if it represented 
in some way the mother she had lost, and her eyes 
filled with tears. Again her father’s hand rested on 
her head, and she knew that he too was thinking of 
her mother. Her nature rose up m revolt against the 
6 


82 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


Indian custom which forbade talking of the dead. 
Oh, if she might only talk with her father about her 
mother, though it were but a few brief words ! Never 
since her mother’s death had her name been men- 
tioned between them. She lifted her eyes, pathetic 
with three years’ hunger, to his. As their glances 
met, it seemed as if the veil that had been between 
their diverse natures was for a moment lifted, and 
they understood each other better than they ever had 
before. While his look imposed silence and sealed 
her lips as with a spoken command, there was a gleam 
of tenderness in it that said, I understand, I too 
remember ; but it must not be spoken.” 

There came to her a sense of getting closer to her 
father’s heart, even while his eyes held her back and 
bade her be silent. 

At length the chief spoke, this time very gently. 

“ Now I shall talk to you not as to a girl but as to 
a woman. You are Multnomah’s only child. When 
he dies there will be no one but you to take his place. 
Are your shoulders strong enough to bear the weight 
of power, the weight that crushes men? Can you 
break down revolt and read the hearts of plotters, — 
yes, and detect conspiracy when it is but a whisper 
in the air? Can you sway council and battle to your 
will as the warrior bends his bow? No; it takes 
men, men strong of heart, to rule the races of the 
Wauna. Therefore there is but one way left me 
whereby the line of Multnomah may still be head of 
the confederacy when he is gone. I must wed you 
to a great warrior who can take my place when I am 
dead and shelter you with his strength. Then the 
name and the power of Multnomah will still live 


WALLULAH, 83 

among the tribes, though Multnomah himself be 
cmrhbled into dust.” 

She made no reply, but sat looking confused and 
pained, by no means elated at the future he had 
described. 

Have you never thought of this, — that some time 
I must give you to a warrior?” 

Her head drooped lower and her cheek faintly 
flushed. 

Sometimes.” 

‘‘ But you have chosen no one ? ” 

“ I do not know,” she faltered. 

Her father’s hand still rested on her head, 
but there was an expression on his face that showed 
he would not hesitate to sacrifice her happiness to 
his ambition. 

“You have chosen, then? Is he a chief? No, I 
will not ask that ; the daughter of Multnomah could 
love no one but a chief. I have already selected a 
husband for you. Tear this other love from your 
heart and cast it aside.” 

The flush died out of her cheek, leaving it cold and 
ashen; and her fingers worked nervously with the 
flute in her lap. 

He continued coldly, — 

“ The fame of your beauty has gone out through 
all the land. The chief of the Chopponish ^ has offered 
many horses for you, and the chief of the Spokanes, 
our ancient foes, has said there would be peace be- 
tween us if I gave you to him. But I have promised 
you to another. Your marriage to him will knit the 
bravest tribe of the confederacy to us ; he will take 

1 Indian name of the Nez Pereas. 


84 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

my place when I am dead, and our people will still 
be strong.” 

She made no reply. What could she do against 
her father’s granite will? All the grace and mobility 
were gone from her face, and it was drooping and 
dull almost to impassiveness. She was only an In- 
dian girl now, waiting to learn the name of him who 
was to be her master. 

‘‘ What is the name of the one you love ? Speak 
it once, then never speak it again.” 

Snoqualmie, chief of the Cayuses,” faltered her 
tremulous lips. 

A quick change of expression came into the gaze 
that was bent on her. 

‘‘Now lift your head and meet your fate like 
the daughter of a chief. Do not let me see 
your face change while I tell you whom I have 
chosen.” 

She lifted her face in a tumult of fear and dread, 
and her eyes fastened pathetically on the chief. 

“His name is — ” she clasped her hands and her 
whole soul went out to '‘her father in the mute suppli- 
cation of her gaze — “ the chief Snoqualmie, him of 
whom you have thought.” 

Her face was bewilderment itself for an instant; 
the next, the sudden light, the quick flash of expres- 
sion which transfigured it in a moment of joy or sur- 
prise, came to her, and she raised his hand and kissed 
it. Was that all ? Remember she had in her the deep, 
mute Indian nature that meets joy or anguish alike in 
silence. She had early learned to repress and control 
her emotions. Perhaps that was why she was so sad 
and brooding now. 


IVALLUL4H. 


S5 

Where have you seen Snoqualmie? ” asked Mult- 
nomah. << Not in your father’s lodge, surely, for when 
strange chiefs came to him you always fled like a 
frightened bird.” 

“ Once only have I seen him,” she replied, flushing 
and confused. ‘‘ He had come here alone to tell you 
that some of the tribes were plotting against you. I 
saw him as he went back through the wood to the 
place where his canoe was drawn up on the bank of 
the river. He was tall ; his black hair fell below his 
shoulders ; and his look was very proud and strong. 
His back was to the setting sun, and it shone around 
him robing him with fire, and I thought he looked 
like the Indian sun-god.” 

“ I am glad it is pleasant for you to obey me. Now, 
listen while I tell you what you must do as the wife 
of Snoqualmie.” 

Stilling the sweet tumult in her breast, she tried hard 
to listen while he told her of the plans, the treaties, 
the friendships, and the enmities she must urge on 
her husband, when he became war-chief and was car- 
rying on her father’s work ; and in part she under- 
stood, for her imagination was captivated by the 
splendid though barbarian dream of empire he set 
before her. 

At length, as the sun was setting, one came to tell 
Multnomah that a runner from a tribe beyond the 
mountains had come to see him. Then her father 
left her ; but Wallulah still sat on the mossy log, while 
all the woodland was golden in the glory of sunset. 

Her beloved flute was pressed close to her cheek, 
and her face was bright and joyous ; she was think- 
ing of Snoqualmie, the handsome stately chief whom 


86 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

she had seen but once, but whose appearance, as she 
saw him then, had filled her girlish heart. 

And all the time she knew not that this Snoqual- 
mie, to whom she was to be given, was one of the 
most cruel and inhuman of men, terrible even to 
the grim warriors of the Wauna for his deeds of 
blood. 


SENDING OUT THE RUNNERS 87 


CHAPTER IV. 


SENDING OUT THE RUNNERS. 

Speed, Malise, speed ; the dun deer’s hide 
On fleeter foot was never tied ; 

Herald of battle, fate and fear 
Stretch around thy fleet career. 


Scott. 


T early morning, the sachems had gathered in the 



council-grove, Multnomah on the seat of the 
war-chief, and twenty runners before him. They 
were the flower of the Willamette youth, every one 
of royal birth, handsome in shape and limb, fleet- 
footed as the deer. They were slender and sinewy 
in build, with aquiline features and sharp searching 


eyes, 


Their garb was light. Leggins and moccasins had 
been laid aside ; even the hiagua shells were stripped 
from their ears. All stood nerved and eager for the 
race, waiting for the word that was to scatter them 
throughout the Indian empire, living thunderbolts 
bearing the summons of Multnomah. 

The message had been given them, and they waited 
only to pledge themselves to its faithful delivery. 

‘‘You promise,” said the chief, while his flashing 
glance read every messenger to the heart, “you 
promise that neither cougar nor cataract nor ambus- 
cade shall deter you from the delivery of this sum- 
mons ; that you will not turn back, though the spears 


88 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


of the enemy are thicker in your path than ferns 
along the Santiam? You promise that though you fall 
in death, the summons shall go on? ” 

The spokesman of the runners, the runner to the 
Chopponish, stepped forward. With gestures of per- 
fect grace, and in a voice that rang like a silver 
trumpet, he repeated the ancient oath of the Wil- 
lamettes, — the oath used by the Shoshones to-day. 

The earth hears us, the sun sees us. Shall we 
fail in fidelity to our chief? ” 

There was a pause. The distant cry of swans 
came from the river ; the great trees of council rus- 
tled in the breeze. Multnomah rose from his seat, 
gripping the bow on which he leaned. Into that 
one moment he seemed gathering yet repressing all 
the fierceness of his passion, all the grandeur of his 
will. Far in the shade he saw Tohomish raise his 
hand imploringly, but the eyes of the orator sank 
once more under the glance of the war-chief. 

Go ! ” 

An electric shock passed through all who heard ; 
and except for the chiefs standing on its outskirts 
like sombre shadows, the grove was empty in a 
moment. 

Beyond the waters that girdled the island, one 
runner took the trail to Puyallup, one the trail to 
Umatilla, one the path to Chelon, and one the path 
to Shasta ; another departed toward the volcano -rent 
desert of Klamath, and still another toward the sea- 
washed shores of Puget Sound 

The irrevocable summons had gone forth; the 
council was inevitable, — the crisis must come. 
Long did Multnomah and his chiefs sit in council 



iC 



Earth hears uSy 
Sun sees us."^ 







SENDING OUT THE RUNNERS. 89 

that day. Resolute were the speeches that came 
from all, though many secretly regretted that they 
had allowed Multnomah’s oratory to persuade them 
into declaring for the council: but there was no 
retreat. 

Across hills and canyons sped the fleet runners, on 
to the huge bark lodges of Puget Sound, the fisheries 
of the Columbia, and the crowded race-courses of the 
Yakima. Into camps of wandering prairie tribes, 
where the lodges stood like a city to-day and were 
rolled up and strapped on the backs of horses to- 
morrow j into councils where sinister chiefs were talk- 
ing low of war against the Willamettes ; into wild 
midnight dances of plotting dreamers and medicine- 
men, — they came with the brief stern summons, and 
passed on to speak it to the tribes beyond. 


'f-lv5^o,‘./A .'. i.> Vv/-.i-7 t4 '-.t;''J >. V -‘-. ■•, . - 
■» •'•7;.. 5,^'. ;■'- •.■ .\' ‘V. . X^.- ' .; 

■'•■ ■ ■ ■■ ■;" V *' ''; ' ** '" ' 

1 -' » ■ . • \ ' V i 

.. . . i' ,t • ' ' • . ‘ ■ 


\ ' 






u. lu 
- f ■• * i .‘\ •' 



. , 1 - . •' ' ■ 


« 

4 


i 


W 


i 


I 


f 


r 


% 

4 


ft 




V 




4 


I 



» 


\ 


t 


t 



» ( 


I 


i 


i 


- »• 


% 


I 




4 


\ 




♦V. 

n * 

id iV'.t 


f 


/ 


BOOK III. 


THE GATHERING OF THE TRIBES. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE BROKEN PEACE-PIPE. 

My full defiance, hate, and scorn. 

Scott. 

T T is the day after the departure of the runners to 
call the. great council, — eight years since Cecil 
Grey went out into the wilderness. Smoke is curling 
slowly upward from an Indian camp on the prairie 
not far from the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon. 
Fifteen or twenty cone-shaped lodges, each made of 
mats stretched on a frame-work of poles, compose 
the village. It swarms with wolfish-looking dogs and 
dirty, unclad children. Heaps of refuse, heads and 
feet of game, lie decaying among the wigwams, taint- 
ing the air with their disgusting odor. Here and 
there an ancient withered specimen of humanity sits 
in the sun, absorbing its rays with a dull animal-like 
sense of enjoyment, and a group of warriors lie idly 
talking. Some of the squaws are preparing food, 
boiling it in water-tight willow baskets by filling them 
with water and putting in hot stones.^ Horses are 


1 See Bancroft’s “ Native Races,” vol. i., p. 270. 


92 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


tethered near the lodges, and others are running loose 
on the prairie. 

There are not many of them. The Indians have 
only scores now where a century later Lewis and 
Clark found thousands; and there are old men in 
the camp who can recall the time when the first 
horses ever seen among them were bought or stolen 
from the tribes to the south. 

On every side the prairie sweeps away in long 
grassy swells and hollows, rolling off to the base of 
the Blue Mountains. 

The camp has the sluggish aspect that an Indian 
camp always presents at noonday. 

Suddenly a keen-sighted warrior points to a dim 
speck far over the prairie toward the land of the 
Bannocks. A white man would have scarcely noticed 
it; or if he had, would have thought it only some 
wandering deer or antelope. But the Indians, glanc- 
ing at the moving object, have already recognized it 
as a horseman coming straight toward the camp. 

Some messenger it is, doubtless, from the Bannocks. 
Once the whole camp would have rushed to arms at 
the approach of a rider from that direction, for the 
two tribes had been at bitter enmity ; but of late the 
peace-pipe has been smoked between them, and 
the old feud is at an end. Still, the sight arouses 
considerable curiosity and much speculation as to the 
object of the visitor. 

He is a good rider, his horse is fleet, and in less 
time than would have been thought possible reaches 
the camp. He gallops up, stops near the lodges that 
are farthest out, and springs lightly to the ground. 
He does not go on into the camp, but stands beside 


THE BROKEN PEACE-PIPE. 93 

his horse till advances are made on the other 
side. 

The dogs bark at him ; his steed, a fiery black, 
tosses its head and paws the ground ; he stands beside 
it immovably, and to all appearance is ready so to 
stand till sunset. Some of the warriors recognize him 
as one of the bravest of the Bannocks. He looks like 
a daring, resolute man, yet wary and self-contained. 

After a while one of the Cayuse warriors (for this 
was a camp of the Cayuses) advanced toward him, 
and a grave salutation was exchanged. Then the 
Bannock said that he wanted to see the Cayuse chief, 
Snoqualmie, in the council-lodge, for the chief of the 
Bannocks had sent a talk ” to the Cayuses. 

The warrior left him to speak with Snoqualmie. In 
a short time he returned, saying that the chief and 
the warriors had gone to the council- lodge and were 
ready to hear the talk ” that their brother, the chief 
of the Bannocks, had sent them. The messenger 
tied his horse by its lariat, or long hair-rope, to a 
bush, and followed the brave to the lodge. 

It was a large wigwam in the centre of the village. 
A crowd of old men, women, and children had al- 
ready gathered around the door. Within, on one 
side of the room, sat in three rows a semi-circle of 
braves, facing the chief, who sat on the opposite side. 
Near the door was a clear space where the messenger 
was to stand while speaking. 

He entered, and the doorway behind him was im- 
mediately blocked up by the motley crowd excluded 
from the interior. Not a warrior in the council looked 
at him ; even the chief, Snoqualmie, did not turn his 
head. The messenger advanced a few paces into the 


94 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


room, stopped, and stood as impassive as the rest. 
Then, when the demands of Indian stoicism had been 
satisfied, Snoqualmie turned his face, a handsome but 
treacherous and cruel face, upon the messenger. 

‘‘The warrior comes to speak the words of our 
brother, the chief of the Bannocks ; he is welcome. 
Shall we smoke the pipe of peace before we hear our 
brother’s words?’* 

The Bannock gazed steadily at Snoqualmie. In 
that fierce and proud regard was something the 
Cayuse could not fathom. 

“Why should the peace-pipe be smoked?” he 
asked. “ Was it not smoked in the great council a 
moon ago ? Did not Snoqualmie say then that the 
two tribes should henceforth be as one tribe, and that 
the Bannocks should be the brethren of the Cayuses 
forever? ” 

“Those were the words,” replied the chief with 
dignity. “ Snoqualmie has not forgotten them.” 

All eyes were now turned on the messenger ; they 
saw that something unexpected was coming. The 
Bannock drew his form up to its full height, and his 
resolute features expressed the bitterest scorn. 

“ Nor have the Bannocks forgotten. At the coun- 
cil you talked ‘ peace, peace.’ Last night some of your 
young men surprised a little camp of Bannocks, — a 
few old men and boys who were watching horses, — 
and slew them and ran off the horses. Is that your 
peace ? The Bannocks will have no such peace. This 
is the word the chief of the Bannocks sends you ! ” 

Holding up the peace-pipe that had been smoked 
at the great council and afterward given to the medi- 
cine-men of the Bannocks as a pledge of Cayuse sin- 


THE BROKEN PEACE-PIPE. 95 

cerity, he broke the long slender stem twice, thrice, 
crushed the bowl in his fingers, and dashed the pieces 
at Snoqualmie’s feet. It was a defiance, a contempt- 
uous rejection of peace, a declaration of war more 
disdainful than any words could have made it. 

Then, before they could recover from their astonish- 
ment, the Bannock turned and leaped through the 
crowd at the door, — for an instant’s stay was death. 
Even as he leaped, Snoqualmie’s tomahawk whizzed 
after him, and a dozen warriors were on their feet, 
weapon in hand. But the swift, wild drama had been 
played like lightning, and he was gone. Only, a 
brave who had tried to intercept his passage lay on 
the ground outside the lodge, stabbed to the heart. 
They rushed to the door in time to see him throw 
himself on his horse and dash off, looking back to 
give a yell of triumph and defiance. 

In less time than it takes to describe it, the horses 
tethered near the lodges were mounted and twenty 
riders were in pursuit. But the Bannock was con- 
siderably in advance now, and the fine black horse 
he rode held its own nobly. Out over the prairie 
flew the pursuing Cayuses, yelling like demons, the 
fugitive turning now and then to utter a shout of 
derision. 

Back at the lodges, the crowd of spectators looked 
on with excited comments. 

His horse is tired, ours are fresh ! ” They gain 
on him ! ” No, he is getting farther from them ! ” 

See, he throws away his blanket ! ” They are 
closer, closer ! ” “ No, no, his horse goes like a deer.” 

Out over the prairies, fleeting like the shadow of a 
hurrying cloud, passed the race, the black horse 


96 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


leading, the Cayuse riders close behind, their long 
hair outstreaming, their moccasins pressed against 
their horses’ sides, their whips falling without mercy. 
Down a canyon they swept in pursuit and passed from 
the ken of the watchers at the camp, the black horse 
still in the van. 

But it could not cope with the fresh horses of the 
Cayuses, and they gained steadily. At last the pur- 
suers came within bowshot, but they did not shoot; 
the fugitive knew too well the reason why. Woe unto 
him if he fell alive into their hands ! He leaned low 
along his horse’s neck, chanting a weird refrain as if 
charming it to its utmost speed, and ever and anon 
looked back with that heart-shaking shout of defiance. 
But steadily his pursuers gained on him ; and one, 
outstripping the rest, rode alongside and reached out 
to seize his rein. Even as he touched it, the Ban- 
nock’s war-club swung in air and the Cayuse reeled 
dead from his saddle. A howl of rage burst from the 
others, a whoop of exultation from the fugitive. 

But at length his horse’s breath grew short and 
broken, he felt its body tremble as it ran, and his 
enemies closed in around him. 

Thrice the war-club rose and fell, thrice was a 
saddle emptied ; but all in vain. Quickly his horse 
was caught, he was dragged from the saddle and 
bound hand and foot. 

He was thrown across a horse and brought back to 
the village. What a chorus of triumph went up from 
the camp, when it was seen that they were bringing 
him back ! It was an ominous sound, with something 
of wolfish ferocity in it. But the Bannock only smiled 
grimly. 


THE BROKEN PEACE-PIPE. 


97 


He is bound to a post, — a charred, bloodstained 
post to which others of his race have been bound 
before him. The women and children taunt him, 
jeer at him, strike him even. The warriors do not. 
They will presently do more than that. Some busy 
themselves building a fire near by ; others bring 
pieces of flint, spear points, jagged fragments of rock, 
and heat them in it. The prisoner, dusty, torn, 
parched with thirst, and bleeding from many wounds, 
looks on with perfect indifference. Snoqualmie comes 
and gazes at him ; the prisoner does not notice him, 
is seemingly unconscious of his presence. 

By and by a band of hunters ride up from a long 
excursion. They have heard nothing of the trouble. 
With them is a young Bannock who is visiting the 
tribe. He rides up with his Cayuse comrades, laugh- 
ing, gesticulating in a lively way. The jest dies on 
his lips when he recognizes the Bannock who is tied 
to the stake. Before he can even think of flight, he 
is dragged from his horse and bound, — his whilom 
comrades, as soon as they understand the situation, 
becoming his bitterest assailants. 

For it is war again, war to the death between the 
tribes, until, two centuries later, both shall alike be 
crushed by the white man. 

At length the preparations are complete, and the 
women and children, who have been swarming around 
and taunting the captives, are brushed aside like so 
many flies by the stern warriors. First, the young 
Bannock who has just come in is put where he must 
have a full view of the other. Neither speaks, but 
a glance passes between them that is like a mutual 
charge to die bravely. Snoqualmie comes and stands 
7 


98 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


close by the prisoner and gives directions for the 
torture to begin. 

The Bannock is stripped. The stone blades that 
have been in the fire are brought, all red and glowing 
with heat, and pressed against his bare flesh. It 
burns and hisses under the fiery torture, but the 
warrior only sneers. 

It does n’t hurt ; you can’t hurt me. You are 
fools. You don’t know how to torture.” ^ 

No refinement of cruelty could wring a complaint 
from him. It was in vain that they burned him, cut 
the flesh from his fingers, branded his cheek with the 
heated bowl of the pipe he had broken. 

‘‘Try it again,” he said mockingly, while his flesh 
smoked. “ I feel no pain. We torture your people 
a great deal better, for we make them cry out like 
little children.” 

More and more murderous and terrible grew the 
wrath of his tormentors, as this stream of vituperation 
fell on their ears. Again and again weapons were 
lifted to slay him, but Snoqualmie put them back. 

“ He can suffer more yet,” he said ; and the words 
were like a glimpse into the cold, merciless heart of 
the man. Other and fiercer tortures were devised by 
the chief, who stood over him, pointing out where and 
how the keenest pain could be given, the bitterest 
pang inflicted on that burned and broken body. 
At last it seemed no longer a man, but a bleeding, 
scorched, mutilated mass of flesh that hung to the 
stake ; only the lips still breathed defiance and the 
eyes gleamed deathless hate. Looking upon one and 

1 See Ross Cox’s “ Adventures on the Columbia River ” for a de- 
scription of torture among the Columbia tribes. 


THE BROKEN PEACE-PIPE, 


99 


another, he boasted of how he had slain their friends 
and relatives. Many of his boasts were undoubtedly 
false, but they were very bitter. 

It was by my arrow that you lost your eye,” he 
said to one ; “ I scalped your father,” to another ; 
and every taunt provoked counter-taunts accompanied 
with blows. 

At length he looked at Snoqualmie, — a look so 
ghastly, so disfigured, that it was like something seen 
in a horrible dream. 

I took your sister prisoner last winter ; you never 
knew, — you thought she had wandered from home 
and was lost in a storm. We put out her eyes, we 
tore out her tongue, and then we told her to go out 
in the snow and find food. Ah-h-h ! you should have 
seen her tears as she went out into the storm, and — ” 
The sentence was never finished. While the last 
word lingered on his lips, his body sunk into a lifeless 
heap under a terrific blow, and Snoqualmie put back 
his blood-stained tomahawk into his belt. 

“ Shall we kill the other? ” demanded the warriors, 
gathering around the surviving Bannock, who had 
been a stoical spectator of his companion’s sufferings. 
A ferocious clamor from the women and children 
hailed the suggestion of new torture ; they thronged 
around the captive, the children struck him, the women 
abused him, spat upon him even, but not a muscle 
of his face quivered ; he merely looked at them with 
stolid indifference. 

Kill him, kill him ! ” Stretch him on red hot 
stones ! ” Wfe will make him cry ! ” 

Snoqualmie hesitated. He wished to save this man 
for another purpose, and yet the Indian blood-thirst 


•L.rfC. 


lOO 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


was on him ; chief and warrior alike were drunken 
with fury, mad with the lust of cruelty. 

As he hesitated, a white man clad in the garb of 
an Indian hunter pushed his way through the crowd. 
Silence fell upon the throng; the clamor of the 
women, the fierce questioning of the warriors ceased. 
The personality of this man was so full of tenderness 
and sympathy, so strong and commanding, that it im- 
pressed the most savage nature. Amid the silence, he 
came and looked first at the dead body that yet hung 
motionless from the stake, then sorrowfully, reproach- 
fully, at the circle of faces around. An expression 
half of sullen shame, half of defiance, crossed more 
than one countenance as his glance fell upon it. 

“ Friends,” said he, sadly, pointing at the dead, 
is this your peace with the Bannocks, — the peace 
you prayed the Great Spirit to bless, the peace that 
was to last forever? ” 

“ The Bannocks sent back the peace-pipe by this 
man, and he broke it and cast the pieces in our 
teeth,” answered one, stubbornly. 

And you slew him for it ? Why not have sent 
runners to his tribe asking why it was returned, and 
demanding to know what wrong you had done, that 
you might right it? Now there will be war. When 
you lie down to sleep at night, the surprise may be 
on you and massacre come while your eyes are heavy 
with slumber; when you are gone on the buffalo 
trail the tomahawk may fall on the women and chil- 
dren at home. Death will lurk for you in every thicket 
and creep round every encampment. The Great 
Spirit is angry because you have stained your hands 
in blood without cause.” 


THE BROKEN PEACE-PIPE. lOi 

There was no reply. This white man, coming 
from far eastern lands lying they knew not where, 
who told them God had sent him to warn them to be 
better, had a singular influence over them. There 
was none of his hearers who did not dimly feel that 
he had done wrong in burning and scarring the poor 
mass of humanity before him, and that the Great 
Spirit was angry with him for it. 

Back in the crowd, some of the children, young 
demons hungering for blood, began to clamor again 
for the death of the surviving Bannock. Cecil Grey 
looked at him pityingly. 

At least you can let him go.” 

There was no answer. Better impulses, better de- 
sires, were struggling in their degraded minds ; but 
cruelty was deeply rooted within them, the vague 
shame and misgiving his words had roused was not 
so strong as the dark animalism of their natures. 

Cecil turned to Snoqualmie. 

I saved your life once, will you not give me his? ” 

The chief regarded him coldly. 

“Take it,” he said after a pause. Cecil stooped 
over and untied the thongs that bound the captive, 
who rose to his feet amid a low angry murmur from 
those around. Snoqualmie silenced it with an im- 
perious gesture. Then he turned to the young 
Bannock. 

“ Dog, one of a race of dogs ! go back to your 
people and tell them what you have seen to-day. Tell 
them how we burned and tortured their messenger, 
and that we let you go only to tell the tale. Tell 
them, too, that Snoqualmie knows his sister died by 
their hand last winter, and that for every hair upon 


t02 


THE BRIDGE OF THE CODS;. 


her head he will burn a Bannock warrior at the stake. 
Go, and be quick, lest my war-party overtake you on 
the trail.” 

The Bannock left without a word, taking the trail 
across the prairie toward the land of his tribe. 

The gift was given, but there was that given with 
it that made it bitter. And now may I bury this 
dead body? ” 

“ It is only a Bannock ; who cares what is done 
with it?” replied Snoqualmie. ^^But remember, my 
debt is paid. Ask of me no more gifts,” and the 
chief turned abruptly away. 

‘‘Who will help me bury this man? ” asked Cecil. 
No one replied; and he went alone and cut the 
thongs that bound the body to the stake. But as he 
stooped to raise it, a tall fine-looking man, a rene- 
gade from the Shoshones, who had taken no part in 
the torture, came forward to help him. Together 
they bore the corpse away from the camp to the hill- 
side ; together they hollowed out a shallow grave and 
stretched the body in it, covering it with earth and 
heaping stones on top, that the cayote might not dis- 
turb the last sleep of the dead. 

When they returned to the camp, they found a war- 
party already in the saddle, with Snoqualmie at their 
head, ready to take the Bannock trail. But before 
they left the camp, a runner entered it with a sum- 
mons from Multnomah calling them to the great 
council of the tribes on Wappatto Island, for which 
they must start on the morrow. 


ON THE WAY TO THE COUNCIL, 103 


CHAPTER II. 

ON THE WAY TO THE COUNCIL. 

They arrived at the village of Wishram. 

Irving: Astoria. 

'^HE camp was all astir at dawn, for sunset must 
^ see them far on the way. They must first cross 
the prairies to the northward till they struck the 
Columbia, then take the great trail leading down it 
to the Willamette valley. It was a two days’ journey 
at the least. 

Squaws were preparing a hurried meal ; lodge-poles 
were being taken down and the mats that covered 
them rolled up and strapped on the backs of horses ; 
Indians, yelling and vociferating, were driving up 
bands of horses from which pack and riding ponies 
were to be selected ; unbroken animals were rearing 
and plunging beneath their first burdens, while mon- 
grel curs ran barking at their heels. Here and there 
unskilful hands were throwing the lasso amid the jeers 
and laughter of the spectators. All was tumult and 
excitement. 

At length they were under way. First rode the 
squaws, driving before them pack-horses and ponies, 
for the herds and entire movable property of the 
tribe accompanied it in all its marches. The squaws 
rode astride, like men, in the rude wooden saddles 
that one yet sees used by the wilder Indians of eastern 


104 the bridge of THE GODS. 

Oregon and Idaho, — very high, both before and be- 
hind, looking like exaggerated pack-saddles. A hair 
rope, tied around the lower jaw of the horse, answered 
for a bridle. To this must be added the quirt, a 
short double-lashed whip fastened into a hollow and 
curiously carved handle. The application of this 
whip was so constant as to keep the right arm in con- 
tinual motion j so that even to-day on the frontier an 
Indian rider can be distinguished from a white man, 
at a distance, by the constant rising and falling of the 
whip arm. With the squaws were the children, some 
of whom, not over four, five, and six years of age, rode 
alone on horseback, tied in the high saddles ; manag- 
ing their steeds with instinctive skill, and when the 
journey became fatiguing, going to sleep, secured by 
their fastenings from falling off. 

Next came the men, on the best horses, unencum- 
bered by weight of any kind and armed with bow and 
arrow. Here and there a lance pointed with flint, a 
stone knife or hatchet, or a heavy war-club, hung at 
the saddle ; but the bow and arrow constituted their 
chief weapon. 

The men formed a kind of rear-guard, protecting the 
migrating tribe from any sudden assault on the part 
of the Bannocks. There were perhaps two hundred 
fighting- men in all. Snoqualmie was at their head, 
and beside him rode the young Willamette runner 
who had brought the summons from Multnomah the 
day before. The Willamette was on horseback for 
the first time in his life. The inland or prairie tribes 
of eastern Oregon, coming as they did in contact with 
tribes whose neighbors bordered on Mexico, had 
owned horses for perhaps a generation ; but the sea- 


ON THE WAY TO THE COUNCIL, 105 


board tribes owned very few, and there were tribes 
on Puget Sound and at the mouth of the Columbia 
who had never seen them. Even the Willamettes, 
sovereign tribe of the confederacy though they were, 
had but few horses. 

This morning the young Willamette had bought a 
colt, giving for it a whole string of hiagua shells. It 
was a pretty, delicate thing, and he was proud of it, 
and had shown his pride by slitting its ears and cut- 
ting off its tail, as was the barbarous custom with 
many of the Indians. He sat on the little creature 
now ; and loaded as it was with the double weight of 
himself and the heavy wooden saddle, it could hardly 
keep pace with the older and stronger horses. 

In the rear of all rode Cecil Grey and the Shoshone 
renegade who had helped him bury the dead Bannock 
the evening before. Cecil's form was as slight and 
graceful in its Indian garb as in days gone by, and 
his face was still the handsome, sensitive face it had 
been eight years before. It was stronger now, more 
resolute and mature, and from long intercourse with 
the Indians there had come into it something grave 
and Indian-like ; but it only gave more of dignity to his 
mien. His brown beard swept his breast, and his face 
was bronzed ; but the lips quivered under the beard, 
and the cheek flushed and paled under the bronze. 

What had he been doing in the eight years that 
had elapsed since he left his New England home? 
Let us listen to his story in his own words as he tells 
it to the Shoshone renegade by his side. 

“ I lived in a land far to the east, beside a great 
water. My people were white like myself. I was 
one of an order of men whom the Great Spirit had 


io6 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


appointed to preach of goodness, mercy, and truth, 
and to explain to the people the sayings of a mighty 
book which he had given to the fathers, — a book that 
told how men should live in this world, and said that 
a beautiful place in the next would be given those 
who are good and true in this. But by and by the 
Great Spirit began to whisper to me of the Indians in 
the wilderness who knew nothing of the book or the 
hope within it, and a longing rose within me to go 
and tell them ; but there were ties that held me to 
my own people, and I knew not what to do. Death 
cut those ties ; and in my hour of grief there came 
to me a vision of a great bridge far in the west, and 
of Indians passing over it, and a voice spoke to me 
and bade me go and seek the land of the bridge, for 
the Great Spirit had a mission for me there ; and I 
went forth into the wilderness. I met many tribes 
and tarried with them, telling them of God. Many 
were evil and treated me harshly, others were kind 
and listened. Some loved me and wished me to 
abide always in their lodges and be one of them. But 
even while they spoke the Great Spirit whispered to 
me to go on, and an unrest rose within me, and I 
could not stay. 

So the years went by, and I wandered farther and 
farther to the west, across rivers and deserts, till I 
reached this tribe ; and they said that farther on, 
toward the land of the Willamettes, a great river 
flowed through the mountains, and across it was a 
bridge of stone built by the gods when the world was 
young. Then I knew that it was the bridge of my 
vision, and the unrest came back and I arose to go. 
But the tribe kept me, half as guest and half as pris' 


ON THE WAY TO THE COUNCIL. 107 

oner, and would not let me depart ; until last night the 
runner came summoning them to the council. Now 
they go, taking me with them. I shall see the land 
of the bridge and perform the work the Great Spirit 
has given me to do.” 

The old grand enthusiasm shone in his look as he 
closed. The Shoshone regarded him with grave 
attention. 

“What became of the book that told of God?” he 
asked earnestly. 

“ A chief took it from me and burned it ; but its 
words were written on my heart, and they could not 
be destroyed.” 

They rode on for a time in silence. The way was 
rugged, the country a succession of canyons and 
ridges covered with green and waving grass but bare 
of trees. Behind them, the Blue Mountains were 
receding in the distance. To the west, Mt. Hood, 
the great white “ Witch Mountain ” of the Indians, 
towered over the prairie, streaking the sky with a long 
floating wreath of volcanic smoke. Before them, 
as they journeyed northward toward the Columbia, 
stretched out the endless prairie. Now they de- 
scended into a deep ravine, now they toiled up a 
steep hillside. The country literally rolled, undulating 
in immense ridges around and over which the long 
file of squaws and warriors, herds and pack-horses, 
wound like a serpent. From the bands ahead came 
shouts and outcries, — the sounds of rude merriment ; 
and above all the long-drawn intonation so familiar 
to those who have been much with Indian horsemen, 
— the endlessly repeated “ ho-ha, ho-ha, ho -ha,” a 
kind of crude riding-song. 


io8 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


After a while Cecil said, I have told you the story 
of my life, will you not tell me the story of yours ? ” 

‘‘Yes,” said the renegade, after a moment’s 
thought ; “ you have shown me your heart as if you 
were my brother. Now I will show you mine. 

“ I was a Shoshone warrior.^ There was a girl in 
our village whom I had loved from childhood. We 
played together; we talked of how, when I became 
a man and a warrior, she should become my wife ; 
she should keep my wigwam ; we would always love 
one another. She grew up, and the chief offered many 
horses for her. Her father took them. She became 
the chiefs wife, and all my heart withered up. Every- 
thing grew dark. I sat in my wigwam or wandered 
in the forest, caring for nothing. 

“When I met her, she turned her face aside, for 
was she not the wife of another? Yet I knew her 
heart hungered for me. The chief knew it too, and 
when he spoke to her a cloud was ever on his brow 
and sharp lightning on his tongue. But she was true. 
Whose lodge was as clean as his? The wood was 
always carried, the water at hand, the meat cooked. 
She searched the very thought that was in his heart 
to save him the trouble of speaking. He could never 
say, ‘ Why is it not done ? ’ But her heart was mine, 
and he knew it ; and he treated her like a dog and not 
like a wife. 

“ Me too he tried to tread under foot. One day 
we assembled to hunt the buffalo. Our horses were 
all collected. Mine stood before my tent, and he 
came and took them away, saying that they were his. 
What could I do? He was a chief. 

1 See Bonneville’s Adventures, chapters xiii, and xlviii. 



r, 


HE Great Witch 
of the hidians. 


Mou7itai?i ’ ’ 






■■ - ' •>,!r4ft iw^ ^ .V ' * -^ ' 




. w^y- ' . w/ - 



1.»=>^1L^ ■ V 'J ■ 

V* 


« \ 


< ^ i *ik^ p - A jen- ■ ifKwff •^; ; 

»faBF 7 ril 5 Hfe 7 > . ■ 



?>T- « - '■.-, K, ■- ».--^ “- 


lli^O ,; 



• # )> 


. 


f^-y 


■ .^.v 'j&i^r,-^--- 

'*t 




Ja 


.sM 


< J 


•J 


Iv; 



4 » 




liJ «' 


^^'■VCSi^w 

^ii|tafi(,\i* 4 ..V’ 

^ ' *v. *^JF 


. i 








) - 


■ - I 


-:t 

%;f/T '- •-’ ^'5r: 


F ** 


. 


• V^r. .‘ ^ - 




•*1 


>V 


•? 




'l^'A: "->‘ » , ', i-r .. . f. -f, ’■ j ■ T'iP 

^ ^ V , klr4fl«rj5f 


■' 




KiHtei'L''- 4 « '-■ . ’^■>0: ■ ’ ' ."M-'i 


ii‘i 5 * • ^. , _ . 

IT-, - ”} ■ >■' - .*> i ■^' 

Sfc/€"''.!tt-. ^i-H 




< 


. ft F ^ ' 


^'v:a-, 


/■ - 


IF' 




rit, 


. ^ 










:id -’"w< 


II _“ e 

f 


ON THE WAY TO THE COUNCIL. 109 

I came no more to the council, I shared no more 
in the hunt and the war-dance. I was unhorsed, de- 
graded, dishonored. He told his wife what he had 
done, and when she wept he beat her. 

One evening I stood on a knoll overlooking the 
meadow where the horses were feeding ; the chiefs 
horses were there, and mine with them. I saw him 
walking among them. The sight maddened me ; my 
blood burned ; I leaped on him ; with two blows I laid 
him dead at my feet. I covered him with earth and 
strewed leaves over the place. Then I went to her 
and told her what I had done, and urged her to fly 
with me. She answered only with tears. I reminded 
her of all she had suffered, and told her I had done 
only what was just. I urged her again to fly. She 
only wept the more, and bade me go. My heart was 
heavy but my eyes were dry. 

‘ It is well,’ I said, ^ I will go alone to the desert. 
None but the wild beasts of the wilderness will be 
with me. The seekers of blood will follow on my 
trail j they may come on me while I am asleep and 
slay me, but you will be safe. I will go alone.’ 

I turned to go. She sprang after me. ‘ No,’ she 
cried, ‘ you shall not go alone. Wherever you go I 
will go : you shall never part from me.’ 

While we were talking, one who had seen me 
slay the chief and had roused the camp, came with 
others. We heard their steps approaching the door, 
and knew that death came with them. We escaped 
at the back of the lodge, but they saw us and their 
arrows flew. She fell, and I caught her in my arms 
and fled into the wood. When we were safe I looked 
at her I carried, and she was dead. An arrow had 


no 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


pierced her heart. I buried her that night beneath 
a heap of stones, and fled to the Cayuses. That is my 
story.” 

^^What will you do now?” asked Cecil, deeply 
touched. 

I shall live a man’s life. I shall hunt and go on 
the war-trail, and say strong words in the council. 
And when my life is ended, when the sunset and the 
night come to me and I go forth into the darkness, I 
know I shall find her I love waiting for me beside the 
death-trail that leads to the spirit-land.” 

The tears came into Cecil’s eyes. 

“ I too have known sorrow,” he said, and like you 
I am a wanderer from my own people. We are going 
together into an unknown land, knowing not what 
may befall us. Let us be friends.” 

And he held out his hand. The Indian took it, — 
awkwardly, as an Indian always takes the hand of a 
white man, but warmly, heartily. 

We are brothers,” he said simply. And as Cecil 
rode on with the wild troop into the unknown world 
before him, he felt that there was one beside him who 
would be faithful, no matter what befell. 

The long day wore on ; the sun rose to the zenith 
and sunk, and still the Indians pushed forward. It 
was a long, forced march, and Cecil was terribly 
fatigued when at last one of the Indians told him that 
they were near a big river where they would camp for 
the night. 

One sun more,” said the Indian, pointing to the 
sun now sinking in the west, and you will see the 
Bridge of the Gods.” 

The news re-animated Cecil, and he hurried on. A 


OJV THE WAY TO THE COUNCIL. 


HI 


shout rose from the Indians in advance. He saw the 
head of the long train of horses and riders pause and 
look downward and the Indians at the rear gallop for- 
ward. Cecil and his friend followed and joined them. 

The river ! the river ! ” cried the Indians, as they 
rode up. The scene below was one of gloomy but 
magnificent beauty. Beneath them opened an im- 
mense canyon, stupendous even in that land of can- 
yons, — the great canyon of the Columbia. The walls 
were brown, destitute of verdure, sinking downward 
from their feet in yawning precipices or steep slopes. 
At the bottom, more than a thousand feet below, 
wound a wide blue river, the gathered waters of half 
a continent. Beneath them, the river plunged over a 
long low precipice with a roar that filled the canyon 
for miles. Farther on, the flat banks encroached upon 
the stream till it seemed narrowed to a silver thread 
among the jutting rocks. Still farther, it widened 
again, swept grandly around a bend in the distance, 
and passed from sight. 

Tmcniy said the Indians to Cecil, in tones 

that imitated the roar of the cataract. It was the 
<<Tum” of Lewis and Clark, the “Tumwater” of 
more recent times ; and the place below, where the 
compressed river wound like a silver thread among 
the flat black rocks, was the far-famed Dalles of the 
Columbia. It was superb, and yet there was some- 
thing profoundly lonely and desolate about it, — the 
majestic river flowing on forever among barren rocks 
and crags, shut in by mountain and desert, wrapped 
in an awful solitude where from age to age scarce 
a sound was heard save the cry of wild beasts or 
wilder men. 


II2 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


It is the very river of death and of desolation/® 
thought Cecil. It looks lonely, forsaken, as if no 
eye had beheld it from the day of creation until now.” 

Looking again at the falls, he saw, what he had 
not before noticed, a large camp of Indians on the 
side nearest them. Glancing across the river, he 
descried on a knoll on the opposite bank — what? 
Houses ! He could not believe his eyes ; could it be 
possible ? Yes, they certainly were long, low houses, 
roofed as the white man roofs his. A sudden wild 
hope thrilled him ; his brain grew dizzy. He turned 
to one of the Indians. 

Who built those houses? ” he exclaimed; ‘‘white 
men like me ? ” 

The other shook his head. 

“ No, Indians.” 

Cecil’s heart died within him. “ After all,” he 
murmured, “ it was absurd to expect to find a settle- 
ment of white men here. How could I think that 
any but Indians had built those houses ? ” 

Still, as they descended the steep zigzag pathway 
leading down to the river, he could not help gazing 
again and again at the buildings that so reminded 
him of home. 

It was Wishram, the ancient village of the falls, 
whose brave and insolent inhabitants, more than a cen- 
tury later, were the dread of the early explorers and 
fur traders of the Columbia. It was built at the last 
and highest fishery on the Columbia, for the salmon 
could not at that time ascend the river above the 
falls. All the wandering tribes of the Upper Colum- 
bia came there to fish or to buy salmon of the Wish- 
ram fishers. There too the Indians of the Lower 


ON THE WAY TO THE COUNCIL. 113 

Columbia and the Willamette met them, and bartered 
the hiagua shells, the dried berries, and wappatto of 
their country for the bear claws and buffalo robes of 
the interior. It was a rendezvous where buying, sell- 
ing, gambling, dancing, feasting took the place of war 
and the chase ; though the ever burning enmities of 
the tribes sometimes flamed into deadly feuds and the 
fair-ground not infrequently became a field of battle. 

The houses of Wishram were built of logs, the walls 
low, the lower half being below the surface of the 
ground, so that they were virtually half cellar. At 
a distance, the log walls and arched roofs gave them 
very much the appearance of a frontier town of the 
whites. 

As they descended to the river-side, Cecil looked 
again and again at the village, so different from the 
skin or bark lodges of the Rocky Mountain tribes he 
had been with so long. But the broad and sweeping 
river flowed between, and his gaze told him little 
more than his first glance had done. 

They were now approaching the camp. Some of 
the younger braves at the head of the Cayuse train 
dashed toward it, yelling and whooping in the wildest 
manner. Through the encampment rang an answer- 
ing shout. 

‘‘ The Cayuses ! the Cayuses ! and the white medi- 
cine-man ! ” 

The news spread like wildfire, and men came run- 
ning from all directions to greet the latest arrivals. 
It was a scene of abject squalor that met Cecil’s eyes 
as he rode with the others into the camp. Never had 
he seen among the Indian races aught so degraded as 
those Columbia River tribes. 

8 


1 14 the bridge of the cods. 

The air was putrid with decaying fish; the very 
skins and mats that covered the lodge-poles were 
black with rancid salmon and filth. Many of the men 
were nude ; most of the women wore only a short 
garment of skin or woven cedar bark about the waist, 
falling scarcely to the knees. The heads of many had 
been artificially flattened ; their faces were brutal ; their 
teeth worn to the gums with eating sanded salmon ; 
and here and there bleared and unsightly eyes showed 
the terrible prevalence of ophthalmia. Salmon were 
drying in the sun on platforms raised above the reach 
of dogs. Half- starved horses whose raw and bleeding 
mouths showed the effect of the hair-rope bridles, and 
whose projecting ribs showed their principal nutri- 
ment to be sage-brush and whip-lash, were picketed 
among the lodges. Cayote-like dogs and unclad 
children, shrill and impish, ran riot, fighting together 
for half-dried, half-decayed pieces of salmon. Pre- 
vailing over everything was the stench which is unique 
and unparalleled among the stenches of the earth, — 
the stench of an Indian camp at a Columbia fishery.^ 

Perhaps ten of the petty inland tribes had assem- 
bled there as their starting-point for the great coun- 
cil at Wappatto Island. All had heard rumors of 
the white man who had appeared among the tribes 
to the south saying that the Great Spirit had sent him 
to warn the Indians to become better, and all were 
anxious to see him. They pointed him out to one 
another as he rode up, — the man of gracefiil presence 
and delicate build ; they thronged around him, naked 

' See Townsend’s Narrative, pages 137, 138. Both Lewis and Clark 
and Ross Cox substantiate his description ; indeed, very much the same 
thing can be seen at the Turn water Fishery to-day. 


ON THE WAY TO THE COUNCIL. 115 

men and half-clad women, squalid, fierce as wild 
beasts, and gazed wonderingly. 

‘‘It is he, the white man,” they whispered among 
themselves. “ See the long beard.” “ See the white 
hands.” “Stand back, the Great Spirit sent him ; he 
is strong tomanowos ; beware his anger.” 

Now the horses were unpacked and the lodges 
pitched, under the eyes of the larger part of the 
encampment, who watched everything with insatiable 
curiosity, and stole all that they could lay their hands 
on. Especially did they hang on every motion of 
Cecil; and he sank very much in their estimation 
when they found that he helped his servant, the old 
Indian woman, put up his lodge. 

“ Ugh, he does squaw’s work,” was the ungracious 
comment. After awhile, when the lodge was up and 
Cecil lay weary and exhausted upon his mat within it, 
a messenger entered and told him that the Indians 
were all collected near the river bank and wished him 
to come and give them the “ talk ” he had brought 
from the Great Spirit. 

Worn as he was, Cecil arose and went. It was in 
the interval between sunset and dark. The sun still 
shone on the cliffs above the great canyon, but in the 
spaces below the shadows were deepening. On the 
flat rocks near the bank of the river, and close by 
the falls of Tumwater, the Indians were gathered to 
the number of several hundred, awaiting him, — some 
squatting, Indian fashion, on the ground, others 
standing upright, looking taller than human in the 
dusky light. Mingled with the debased tribes that 
made up the larger part of the gathering, Cecil saw 
here and there warriors of a bolder and superior race. 


Ii6 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

— Yakimas and Klickitats, clad in skins or wrapped 
in blankets woven of the wool of the mountain sheep. 

Cecil stood before them and spoke, using the Wil- 
lamette tongue, the language of common intercourse 
between the tribes, all of whom had different dialects. 
The audience listened in silence while he told them 
of the goodness and compassion of the Great Spirit ; 
how it grieved him to see his children at war among 
themselves, and how he, Cecil, had been sent to warn 
them to forsake their sins and live better lives. Long 
familiarity with the Indians had imparted to him 
somewhat of their manner of thinking and speaking ; 
his language had become picturesque with Indian im- 
agery, and his style of oratory had acquired a tinge 
of Indian gravity. But the intense and vivid spirit- 
uality that had ever been the charm of his eloquence 
was in it still. There was something in his words 
that for the moment, and unconsciously to them, lifted 
his hearers to a higher plane. When he closed there 
was upon them that vague remorse, that dim desire 
to be better, that indefinable wistfulness, which his 
earnest, tender words never failed to arouse in his 
hearers. 

When he lifted his hands at the close of his talk,” 
and prayed that the Great Spirit might pity them, that 
he might take away from them the black and wicked 
heart of war and hate and give them the new heart 
of peace and love, the silence was almost breathless, 
broken only by the unceasing roar of the falls and the 
solemn pleading of the missionary’s voice. 

He left them and returned through the deepening 
shadows to his lodge. There he flung himself on the 
couch of furs the old Indian woman had spread for 


ON THE WAY TO THE COUNCIL. 117 

him. Fatigued with the long ride of the day and the 
heavy draught his address had made on an overtaxed 
frame, he tried to sleep. 

But he could not. The buildings of the town of 
Wishram across the river, so like the buildings of the 
white man, had awakened a thousand memories of 
home. Vivid pictures of his life in New England 
and in the cloisters of Magdalen came before his 
sleepless eyes. The longing for the refined and 
pleasant things that had filled his life rose strong and 
irrepressible within him. Such thoughts were never 
entirely absent from his mind, but at times they seemed 
to dominate him completely, driving him into a per- 
fect fever of unrest and discontent. After tossing 
for hours on his couch, he arose and went out into 
the open air. 

The stars were bright ; the moon flooded the wide 
canyon with lustre ; the towering walls rose dim and 
shadowy on either side of the river whose waters 
gleamed white in the moonlight ; the solemn roar of 
the falls filled the silence of the night. 

Around him was the barbarian encampment, with 
here and there a fire burning and a group of warriors 
talking beside it. He walked forth among the lodges. 
Some were silent, save for the heavy breathing of the 
sleepers ; others were lighted up within, and he could 
hear the murmur of voices. 

At one place he found around a large fire a crowd 
who were feasting, late as was the hour, and boasting 
of their exploits. He stood in the shadow a moment 
and listened. One of them concluded his tale by 
springing to his feet, advancing a few paces from the 
circle of firelight, and making a fierce speech to invisi- 


Ii8 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

ble foes. Looking toward the land of the Shoshones, 
he denounced them with the utmost fury, dared them 
to face him, scorned them because they did not appear, 
and ended by shaking his tomahawk in their direction, 
amid the applause of his comrades. 

Cecil passed on and reached the outer limit of the 
camp. There, amid some large bowlders, he almost 
stumbled on a band of Indians engaged in some grisly 
ceremony. He saw them, however, in time to escape 
observation and screen himself behind one of the 
rocks. 

One of the Indians held a rattlesnake pinned to 
the ground with a forked stick. Another held out a 
piece of liver to the snake and was provoking him to 
bite it. Again and again the snake, quivering with 
fury and rattling savagely, plunged his fangs into the 
liver. Several Indians stood looking on, with arrows 
in their hands. At length, when the meat was thor- 
oughly impregnated with the virus, the snake was 
released and allowed to crawl away. Then they all 
dipped the points of their arrows in the poisoned 
liver,^ carefully marking the shaft of each in order to 
distinguish it from those not poisoned. None of them 
saw Cecil, and he left without being discovered. 

Why did they wish to go to the council with 
poisoned arrows? 

Further on, among the rocks and remote from the 
camp, he saw a great light and heard a loud hallooing. 
He went cautiously toward it. He found a large fire 
in an open space, and perhaps thirty savages, stripped 

1 See Bancroft’s Native Races, article “ Columbians.” A 
bunch of arrows so poisoned is in the Museum of the Oregon State 
University at Eugene. 


ON THE WAY TO THE COUNCIL. 1 19 

and painted, dancing around it, brandishing their 
weapons and chanting a kind of war-chant. On 
every face, as the firelight fell on it, was mad ferocity 
and lust of war. Near them lay the freshly killed 
body of a horse whose blood they had been drinking. 
Drunk with frenzy, drunk with blood, they danced 
and whirled iji that wild saturnalia till Cecil grew 
dizzy with the sight.^ 

He made his way back to the camp and sought his 
lodge. He heard the wolves howling on the hills, and 
a dark presentiment of evil crept over him. 

It is not to council that these men are going, but 
to war,” he murmured, as he threw himself on his 
couch. “ God help me to be faithful, whatever 
comes ! God help me to keep my life and my words 
filled with his spirit, so that these savage men may be 
drawn to him and made better, and my mission be 
fulfilled ! I can never hope to see the face of white 
man again, but I can live and die faithful to the last.” 

So thinking, a sweet and restful peace came to him, 
and he fell asleep. And even while he thought how 
impossible it was for him ever to reach the land of 
the white man again, an English exploring-ship lay at 
anchor at Yaquina Bay, only two days’ ride distant ; 
and on it were some who had known and loved him 
in times gone by, but who had long since thought 
him lost in the wilderness forever. 


1 Irving’s “ Astoria,” chap. xli. 


/20 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS, 


CHAPTER III. 

THE GREAT CAMP ON THE ISLAND. 

Of different language, form and face, 

A various race of men. 

Scott. 

<< OU say that we shall see the Bridge of the Gods 
to-day? ” asked Cecil of the young Willamette 
runner the next morning. ‘‘Tell me about it; is it 
high?” 

The young Willamette rose to his full height, arched 
his right hand above his eyes, looked skyward with a 
strained expression as if gazing up at an immense 
height, and emitted a prolonged “ ah-h-h ! ” 

That was all, but it was enough to bring the light 
to Cecil’s eyes and a sudden triumphant gladness to 
his heart. At last he approached the land of his 
vision, at last he should find the bridge whose wraith 
had faded before him into the west eight years before ! 

The Cayuse band had started early that morning. 
The chief Snoqualmie was impatient of delay, and 
wished to be one of the earliest at the council ; he 
wanted to signalize himself in the approaching struggle 
by his loyalty to Multnomah, whose daughter he was 
to marry and whom he was to succeed as war-chief. 

The women were in advance, driving the pack- 
horses ; Cecil rode behind them with the Shoshone 
renegade and the young Willamette runner; while 
Snoqualmie brought up the rear, looking sharply after 


THE GREAT CAMP ON THE ISLAND. 12 1 


stragglers, — for some of his young men were very 
much inclined to linger at the rendezvous and indulge 
in a little gambling and horse-racing with the other 
bands, who were not to start till later in the day. 

The young Willamette still rode the pretty little 
pony whose ears and tail he had so barbarously muti- 
lated. It reeled under him from sheer weakness, so 
young was it and so worn by the journey of the day 
before. In vain did Cecil expostulate. With true 
Indian obtuseness and brutality, the Willamette refused 
to see why he should be merciful to a horse. 

Suppose he rode me, what would he care? Now 
I ride him, what do I care? Suppose he die, plenty 
more hiagua shells, plenty more horses.” 

After which logical answer he plied the whip harder 
than ever, making the pony keep up with the stronger 
and abler horses of the other riders. The long train of 
squaws and warriors wound on down the trail by the 
river-side. In a little while Wishram and Tumwater 
passed from sight. The wind began to blow; the 
ever drifting sand of the Columbia came sifting in 
their faces. They passed the Dalles of the Colum- 
bia ; and the river that, as seen from the heights the 
evening before, wound like a silver thread among the 
rocks, was found to be a compressed torrent that 
rushed foaming along the narrow passage, — literally, 
as it has been described, ‘‘ a river turned on edge.” 

There too they passed the camp of the Wascos, 
who were preparing to start, but suspended their 
preparations at the approach of the cavalcade and 
stood along the path eager to see the white man. 
Cecil noticed that as they descended the river the 
language of the local tribes became more gutteral, and 


122 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


the custom of flattening the head prevailed more and 
more.^ 

Below, the scenery was less barren ; the river en- 
tered the Cascade Range, and the steep banks, along 
which wound the trail, grew dark with pines, relieved 
here and there with brighter verdure. They saw 
bands of Indians on the opposite shore, descending 
the trail along that side on the way to the council. 
Many were on foot, though some horses were among 
them. They were Indians of the nine tribes of the 
Klickitat, and as yet had but few horses. A century 
later they owned thousands. Indian women never 
accompanied war- parties j and Cecil noticed that some 
of the bands were composed entirely of men, which 
gave them the appearance of going to war. It had 
an ominous and doubtful look. 

At the Wau-coma (place of cottonwoods), the 
modern Hood River, they found the tribe that inhab- 
ited that beautiful valley already on the march, and 
the two bands mingled and went on together. The 
Wau-comas seemed to be peaceably inclined, for their 
women were with them. 

A short distance below the Wau-coma, the young 
Willamette’s horse, urged till it could go no farther, 
fell beneath him. The blood gushed from its nos- 
trils ; in a few moments it was dead. The Willamette 
extricated himself from it. ''A bad horse, cultus 
[no good] ! ” he said, beating it with his whip. After 
venting his anger on it in that way, he strode forward 
on foot. 

And now Cecil was all expectation, on the alert 
for the first sight of the bridge. 

1 Lewis and Clark. See also Irving’s “ Astoria.” 


THE GREAT CAMP ON THE ISLAND. 123 

Shall we see it soon?” he asked the young 
Willamette. 

When the sun is there, we shall see it,” replied 
the Indian, pointing to the zenith. The sun still 
lacked several hours of noon, and Cecil had to re- 
strain his impatience as best he could. 

Just then an incident occurred that for the time 
effectually obliterated all thought of the bridge, and 
made him a powerful enemy where he least desired one. 

At a narrow place in the trail, the loose horses that 
were being driven at the head of the column became 
frightened and ran back upon their drivers. In a 
moment, squaws, pack-horses, and ponies were all 
mingled together. The squaws tried in vain to restore 
order ; it seemed as if there was going to be a general 
stampede. The men dashed up from the rear, Sno- 
qualmie and Cecil among them. Cecil’s old nurse 
happened to be in Snoqualmie’s way. The horse she 
rode was slow and obstinate; and when she attempted 
to turn aside to let Snoqualmie pass he would not 
obey the rein, and the chiefs way was blocked. To 
Snoqualmie an old Indian woman was little more than 
a dog, and he raised his whip and struck her across 
the face. 

Like a flash, Cecil caught the chiefs rein and lifted 
his own whip. An instant more, and the lash would 
have fallen across the Indian’s face ; but he remem- 
bered that he was a missionary, that he was violating 
his own precepts of forgiveness in the presence of 
those whom he hoped to convert. 

The blow did not fall ; he grappled with his anger 
and held it back ; but Snoqualmie received from him 
a look of scorn so withering, that it seemed when 


124 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS, 


Cecil’s flashing eyes met his own as if he had been 
struck, and he grasped his tomahawk. Cecil released 
the rein and turned away without a word. Snoqual- 
mie seemed for a moment to deliberate within him- 
self; then he let go his weapon and passed on. Order 
was restored and the march resumed. 

You are strong,” said the Shoshone renegade to 
Cecil. He had seen the whole of the little drama. 
‘‘You are strong; you held your anger down, but 
your eyes struck him as if he were a dog.” 

Cecil made no reply, but rode on thinking that he 
had made an enemy. He regretted what had hap- 
pened ; and yet, when he recalled the insult, his blood 
burned and he half regretted that the blow had not 
been given. So, absorbed in painful thought, he rode 
on, till a murmur passing down the line roused him. 

“ The bridge ! The bridge ! ” 

He looked up hastily, his whole frame responding 
to the cry. There it was before him, and only a short 
distance away, — a great natural bridge, a rugged ridge 
of stone, pierced with a wide arched tunnel through 
which the waters flowed, extending across the river. 
It was covered with stunted pine and underbrush 
growing in every nook and crevice ; and on it were 
Indian horsemen with plumed hair and rude lances. 
It was the bridge of the Wauna, the Bridge of the 
Gods, the bridge he had seen in his vision eight years 
before. 

For a moment his brain reeled, everything seemed 
shadowy and unreal, and he half expected to see the 
bridge melt, like the vision, into mist before his eyes. 

Like one in a dream, he rode with the others to 
the place where the path turned abruptly and led 


THE GEE AT CAMP ON THE ISLAND. 125 

over the bridge to the northern bank of the Colum- 
bia. Like one in a dream he listened, while the 
young Willamette told him in a low tone that this 
bridge had been built by the gods when the world 
was young, that it was the tomanowos of the Willam- 
ettes, that while it stood they would be strongest of 
all the tribes, and that if it fell they would fall with 
it. As they crossed it, he noted how the great arch 
rung to his horse’s hoofs ; he noted the bushes grow- 
ing low down to the tunnel’s edge ; he noted how 
majestic was the current as it swept into the vast dark 
opening below, how stately the trees on either bank. 
Then the trail turned down the river-bank again 
toward the Willamette, and the dense fir forest shut 
out the mysterious bridge from Cecil’s backward gaze. 

Solemnity and awe came to him. He had seen the 
bridge of his vision ; he had in truth been divinely 
called to his work. He felt that the sight of the 
bridge was both the visible seal of God upon his 
mission and a sign that its accomplishment was close 
at hand. He bowed his head involuntarily, as in the 
presence of the Most High. He felt that he rode to 
his destiny, that for him all things converged and cul- 
minated at the great council. 

They had not advanced far into the wood ere the 
whole train came to a sudden halt. Riding forward, 
Cecil found a band of horsemen awaiting them. They 
were Klickitats, mounted on good ponies ; neither 
women nor pack-horses were with tnem; they were 
armed and painted, and their stem and menacing 
aspect was more like that of men who were on the 
war-trail than of men who were riding to a “ peace- 
talk.” 


126 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


The Cayuses halted a short distance away. Sno- 
qualmie rode forward and met the Klickitat chief in 
the space between the two bands. A few words 
passed, fierce and questioning on the part of the 
Klickitat, guarded and reserved on the part of the 
Cayuse. Then the Klickitat seemed to suggest some- 
thing at which the Cayuse shook his head indignantly. 
The other instantly wheeled his horse, rode back to 
his band, and apparently reported what Snoqualmie 
had said j for they all set up a taunting shout, and 
after flinging derisive words and gestures at the Cay- 
uses, turned around and dashed at full gallop down 
the trail, leaving the Cayuses covered with a cloud of 
dust. 

And then Cecil knew that the spectacle meant war. 

The air grew softer and more moist as they 
descended the western slope of the Cascade Range. 
The pines gave way to forests of fir, the underwood 
became denser, and ferns grew thick along the trail. 
It had rained the night before, and the boughs and 
bushes hung heavy with pendant drops. Now and 
then an Indian rider, brushing against some vine or 
maple or low swaying bough, brought down upon him- 
self a drenching shower. The disgusted ugh ! ” 
of the victim and the laughter of the others would 
bring a smile to even Cecil’s lips. 

And so approaching the sea, they entered the great, 
wooded, rainy valley of the lower Columbia. It was 
like a different world from the desert sands and prai- 
ries of the upper Columbia. It seemed as if they 
were entering a land of perpetual spring. They 
passed through groves of spreading oaks ; they skirted 
lowlands purple with blooming camas ; they crossed 


THE GEE AT CAMP ON THE ISLAND. 1 27 

prairies where the grass waved rank and high, and 
sunny banks where the strawberries were ripening in 
scarlet masses. And ever and anon they caught sight 
of a far snow peak lifted above the endless reach 
of forest, and through openings in the trees caught 
glimpses of the Columbia spreading wide and beauti- 
ful between densely wooded shores whose bending 
foliage was literally washed by the waters. 

At length, as the sun was setting, they emerged 
from the wood upon a wide and level beach. Before 
them swept the Columbia, broader and grander than at 
any previous view, steadily widening as it neared the 
sea. Opposite them, another river, not as large as 
the Columbia, but still a great river, flowed into it. 

“ Willamette,” said the young runner, pointing to 
this new river. Wappatto Island,” he added, indi- 
cating a magnificent prospect of wood and meadow 
that lay just below the mouth of the Willamette down 
along the Columbia. Cecil could not see the channel 
that separated it from the mainland on the other side, 
and to him it seemed, not an island, but a part of the 
opposite shore. 

Around them on the beach were groups of Indians, 
representatives of various petty tribes who had not 
yet passed to the island of council. Horses were 
tethered to the driftwood strewed along the beach; 
packs and saddles were heaped on the banks awaiting 
the canoes that were to carry them over. Across the 
river, Cecil could see upon the island scattered bands 
of ponies feeding and many Indians passing to and 
fro. Innumerable lodges showed among the trees. 
The river was dotted with canoes. Never before had 
he beheld so large an encampment, not even among 


128 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


the Six Nations or the Sioux. It seemed as if all 
the tribes of Puget Sound and the Columbia were 
there. 

As they halted on the bank, a little canoe came 
skimming over the water like a bird. It bore a mes- 
senger from Multnomah, who had seen the Cayuses as 
soon as they emerged on the beach. 

“ Send your packs over in canoes, swim your 
horses, camp on the island,” was the laconic message. 
Evidently, in view of the coming struggle, Multnomah 
wanted the loyal Ca5Uises close at hand. 

In a little while the horses were stripped of their 
packs, which were heaped in the canoes that had fol- 
lowed the messenger, and the crossing began. A hair 
rope was put around the neck of a horse, and the end 
given to a man in a canoe. The canoe was then pad- 
died out into the stream, and the horse partly pulled, 
partly pushed into the river. The others after much 
beating followed their leader ; and in a little while a 
long line of half submerged horses and riders was 
struggling across the river, while the loaded canoes 
brought up the rear. The rapid current swept them 
downward, and they landed on the opposite bank at 
a point far below that from which they started. 

On the bank of the Columbia, near Morgan’s Lake, 
an old gnarled cottonwood still marks the ancient 
landing-place ; and traces remain of the historic trail 
which led up from the river-bank into the interior of 
the island, — a trail traversed perhaps for centuries, — 
the great Indian road from the upper Columbia to the 
Willamette valley. 

The bank was black with people crowding out to 
see the latest arrivals. It was a thronging multitude 


THE GEE AT CAMP OH THE ISLAND. 1 29 


of dusky faces and diverse costumes. The Nootka 
with his tattooed face was there, clad in his woollen 
blanket, his gigantic form pushing aside the short 
Chinook of the lower Columbia, with his crooked legs, 
his half-naked body glistening with grease, his slit nose 
and ears loaded with hiagua shells. Choppunish 
women, clad in garments of buckskin carefully whit- 
ened with clay, looked with scorn on the women of 
the Cowlitz and Clatsop tribes, whose only dress was 
a fringe of cedar bark hanging from the waist. The 
abject Siawash of Puget Sound, attired in a scanty 
patch-work of rabbit and woodrat skin, stood beside 
the lordly Yakima, who wore deerskin robe and leg- 
gins. And among them all, conscious of his supremacy, 
moved the keen and imperious Willamette. 

They all gazed wonderingly at Cecil, *Hhe white 
man,” the ‘Mong beard,” the “man that came from 
the Great Spirit,” the “ shaman of strong magic,” — 
for rumors of Cecil and his mission had spread from 
tribe to tribe. 

Though accustomed to savage sights, this seemed 
to Cecil the most savage of all. Flat heads and round 
heads ; faces scarred, tattooed, and painted ; faces as 
wild as beasts’ ; faces proud and haughty, degraded 
and debased ; hair cut close to the head, tangled, 
matted, clogged with filth, carefully smoothed and 
braided, — every phase of barbarism in its most blood- 
thirsty ferocity, its most abject squalor, met his glance 
as he looked around him. It seemed like some wild 
phantasmagoria, some weird and wondrous dream ; 
and the discord of tongues, the confusion of dialects, 
completed the bewildering scene. 

Through the surging crowd they found their 
9 


130 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


way to the place where their lodges were to be 
pitched. 

On the morrow the great council was to begin, — 
the council that to the passions of that mob of savages 
might be as the torch to dry brushwood. On the 
morrow Multnomah would try and would condemn to 
death a rebel chief in the presence of the very ones 
who were in secret league with him ; and the setting 
sun would see the Willamette power supreme and 
undisputed, or the confederacy would be broken 
forever in the death-grapple of the tribes. 


AN INDIAN TRIAL. 


I31 


CHAPTER IV. 

AN INDIAN TRIAL. 

Like flame within the naked hand 
His body bore his burning heart. 

Dante Rossetti. 

APPATTO Island had seen many gatherings of 
^ ^ the tribes, but never before had it seen so 
large an assembly as on the opening day of the coun- 
cil. The great cottonwoods of the council-grove 
waved over an audience of sachems and warriors 
the like of which the oldest living Indian could not 
remember. 

No weapons were to be seen, for Multnomah had 
commanded that all arms be left that day in the 
lodges. But the dissatisfied Indians had come with 
weapons hidden under their robes of deer or wolf 
skin, which no one should have known better than 
Multnomah. Had he taken any precautions against 
surprise? Evidently not. A large body of Willam- 
ette warriors, muffled in their blankets, lounged care- 
lessly around the grove, with not a weapon visible 
among them; behind them thronged the vast and 
motley assemblage of doubtful allies; and back of 
them, on the outskirts of the crowd, were the faithful 
Cayuses, unarmed like the Willamettes. Had Mult- 
nomah’s wonderful astuteness failed him now when it 
was never needed more ? 


132 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


He was on the council-seat, a stone covered with 
furs j the Willamette sachems sat in their places facing 
him; and mats were spread for the chiefs of the 
tributaries. On a bearskin before the stem war- 
chief lay a peace-pipe and a tomahawk ; and to the 
Indians, accustomed to signs and symbols, the two 
had a grim significance. 

One by one the chiefs entered the circle and took 
their seats on the mats provided for them. Those 
who were friendly to Multnomah first laid presents 
before him; those who were not, took their places 
without offering him either gift or salutation. Mult- 
nomah, however, seemed unconscious of any neglect. 

The chief of a Klamath tribe offered him a bril- 
liantly dyed blanket ; another, a finely fringed quiver, 
full of arrows ; another, a long and massive string of 
hiagua shells. Each laid his gift before Multnomah 
and took his seat in silence. 

The chief of the Chopponish presented him with a 
fine horse, the best belonging to his tribe. Multno- 
mah accepted it, and a slave led it away. Then came 
Snoqualmie, bringing with him Cecil Grey. The 
chiefs hour of vengeance was at hand. 

Behold the white man from the land where the 
sun rises, the white shaman of whom all the tribes 
have heard. He is thine. Let him be the white 
slave of Multnomah. All the chiefs have slaves, but 
who will have a white slave like Multnomah? ” 

Cecil saw the abyss of slavery yawning before him, 
and grew pale to the lips. His heart sank within 
him ; then the resolute purpose that never failed him 
in time of peril returned ; he lifted his head and 
met Multnomah’s gaze with dignity. The war-chief 


AN INDIAN TRIAL. 133 

bent on him the glance which read men to the 
heart. 

^‘The white stranger has been a chief among his 
own people,” he said to Cecil, more in the manner of 
one asserting a fact than asking a question. 

I have often spoken to my people in the gather- 
ings to hear the word of the Great Spirit.” 

Again the keen, inscrutable gaze of the great chief 
seemed to probe his being to its core ; again the 
calm, grave stranger met it without shrinking. The 
instinct, so common among savage races, of in some 
way knowing what a man is, of intuitively grasping his 
true merit, was possessed by Multnomah in a large 
degree; and the royalty in his nature instinctively 
recognized the royalty in Cecil’s. 

The white guest who comes into the land of 
Multnomah shall be to him as a guest; the chief 
should still be chief in any land. White stranger, 
Multnomah gives you welcome ; sit down among the 
chiefs.” 

Cecil took his place among them with all the com- 
posure he could command, well knowing that he who 
would be influential among the Indians must seem to 
be unmoved by any change of fortune. He felt, how- 
ever, not only the joy of personal deliverance, but 
mingled with it came the glad, triumphant thought 
that he had now a voice in the deliberations of the 
chiefs ; it was a grand door opened for Indian evan- 
gelization. As for Snoqualmie, his face was as im- 
passive as granite. One would have said that Cecil’s 
victory was to him a matter of no moment at all. But 
under the guise of indifference his anger burned fierce 
and deadly, — not against Multnomah but against Cecil. 


134 the bridge of the gods. 

The last chief had taken his place in the council. 
There was a long, ceremonious pause. Then Mult- 
nomah arose. He looked over the council, upon the 
stem faces of the Willamettes and the loyal tributaries, 
upon the sullen faces of the malcontents, upon the 
fierce and lowering multitude beyond. Over the 
throng he looked, and felt as one feels who stands 
on the brink of a volcano ; yet his strong voice never 
rang stronger, the grand old chief never looked more 
a chief than then. 

He is every inch a king,” thought Cecil. The 
chief spoke in the common Willamette language, at 
that time the medium of intercourse between the 
tribes as the Chinook is now. The royal tongue was 
not used in a mixed council. 

“Warriors and chiefs, Multnomah gives you wel- 
come. He spreads the buffalo -robe.” He made the 
Indian gesture of welcome, opening his hands to them 
with a backward and downward gesture, as of one 
spreading a robe. “ To the warriors Multnomah says. 
The grass upon my prairies is green for your horses ; 
behold the wood, the water, the game ; they are 
yours.’ To the chiefs he says, * The mat is spread for 
you in my own lodge and the meat is cooked.’ The 
hearts of the Willamettes change not as the winters 
go by, and your welcome is the same as of old. Word 
came to us that the tribes were angry and had spoken 
bitter things against the Willamettes ; yes, that they 
longed for the confederacy to be broken and the 
old days to come again when tribe was divided against 
tribe and the Shoshones and Spokanes trampled upon 
you all. But Multnomah trusted his allies ; for had 
they not smoked the peace-pipe with him and gone 


AN INDIAN TRIAL. 


135 


with him on the war- trail ? So he stopped his ears and 
would not listen, but let those rumors go past him like 
thistle-down upon the wind. 

Warriors, Multnomah has shown his heart. What 
say you? Shall the peace-pipe be lighted and the 
talk begin?” 

He resumed his seat. All eyes turned to where 
the peace-pipe and the tomahawk lay side by side 
before the council. Multnomah seemed waiting for 
them to choose between the two. 

Then Snoqualmie, the bravest and most loyal of the 
tributaries, spoke. 

‘‘ Let the peace-pipe be lighted ; we come not for 
strife, but to be knit together.” 

The angry malcontents in the council only frowned 
and drew their blankets closer around them. Toho- 
mish the seer, as the oldest chief and most renowned 
medicine-man present, came forward and lighted the 
pipe, — a long, thin piece of carving in black stone, 
the workmanship of the Nootkas or Hydahs, who 
made the more elaborate pipes used by the Indians 
of the Columbia River. 

Muttering some mystical incantation, he waved it 
to the east and the west, to the north and the 
south; and when the charm was complete, gave it 
to Multnomah, who smoked it and passed it to Sno- 
qualmie. From chief to chief it circled around the 
whole council, but among them were those who sat 
with eyes fixed moodily on the ground and would 
not so much as touch or look at it. As the pipe 
passed round tiiere was a subdued murmur and move- 
ment in the multitude, a low threatening clamor, as 
yet held in check by awe of Multnomah and dread 


136 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

of the Willamette warriors. But the war-chief seemed 
unconscious that any had refused the pipe. He now 
arose and said, — 

The pipe is smoked. Are not our hearts as one ? 
Is there not perfect trust between us? Now let us 
talk. First of all, Multnomah desires wise words from 
his brethren. Last winter one of the tribes rose up 
against Multnomah, saying that he should no longer be 
elder brother and war-chief of the tribes. But the 
rebels were beaten and all of them slain save the 
chief, who was reserved to be tried before you. You 
in your wisdom shall decide what shall be done with 
the warrior who has rebelled against his chief and 
stained his hands with the blood of his brethren.” 

Two Willamette braves then entered the circle, 
bringing with them one whose hands were tied be- 
hind him, whose form was emaciated with hunger and 
disease, but whose carriage was erect and haughty. 
Behind came a squaw, following him into the very 
presence of Multnomah, as if resolved to share his 
fortunes to the last. It was his wife. She was in- 
stantly thrust back and driven with brutal blows from 
the council. But she lingered on the outskirts of the 
crowd, watching and waiting with mute, sullen fidelity 
the outcome of the trial. No one looked at her, no 
one cared for her; even her husband’s sympathizers 
jostled the poor shrinking form aside, — for she was 
only a squaw, while he was a great brave. 

He looked a great brave, standing there before 
Multnomah and the chiefs with a dignity in his mien 
that no reverse could crush, no torture could destroy. 
Haggard, starved, bound, his eyes gleamed deathless 
and unconquerable hate on council and war-chief alike. 


AN INDIAN TRIAL. 


137 


There were dark and menacing looks among the mal- 
contents ; in the captive they saw personified their 
own loss of freedom and the hated domination of 
the Willamettes. 

Speak ! You that were a chief, you whose people 
sleep in the dust, — what have you to say in your 
defence ? The tribes are met together, and the chiefs 
sit here to listen and to judge.” 

The rebel sachem drew himself up proudly and 
fixed his flashing eyes on Multnomah. 

“ The tongue of Multnomah is a trap. I am brought 
not to be tried but to be condemned and slain, that 
the tribes may see it and be afraid. No one knows 
this better that Multnomah. Yet I will speak while 
I still live, and stand here in the sun ; for I go out 
into the darkness, and the earth will cover my face, 
and my voice shall be heard no more among men. 

Why should the Willamettes rule the other tribes ? 
Are they better than we ? The Great Spirit gave us 
freedom, and who may make himself master and take 
it away? 

I was chief of a tribe ; we dwelt in the land the 
Great Spirit gave our fathers ; their bones were in it ; 
it was ours. But the Willamettes said to us, ‘ We 
are your elder brethren, you must help us. Come, 
go with us to fight the Shoshones.’ Our young men 
went, for the Willamettes were strong and we could 
not refuse them. Many were slain, and the women 
wailed despairingly. The Willamettes hunted on our 
hunting-grounds and dug the camas on our prairies, so 
that there was not enough for us ; and when winter 
came, our children cried for food. Then the run- 
ners of the Willamettes came to us through the snow. 


13S THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

saying, ‘Come and join the war-party that goes to 
fight the Bannocks.’ 

“ But our hearts burned within us and we replied, 
‘ Our hunting-grounds and our food you have 
taken ; will you have our lives also ? Go back and 
tell your chief that if we must fight, we will fight him 
and not the Bannocks.’ Then the Willamettes came 
upon us and we fought them, for their tyranny was so 
heavy that we could not breathe under it and death 
had become better than life. But they were the 
stronger, and when did the heart of a Willamette feel 
pity? To-day I only am left, to say these words for 
my race. 

“ Who made the Willamettes masters over us ? The 
Great Spirit gave us freedom, and none may take it 
away. Was it not well to fight ? Yes ; free my hands 
and give me back my people from the cairns and the 
death-huts, and we will fight again ! I go to my death, 
but the words I have spoken will live. The hearts of 
those listening here will treasure them up ; they will 
be told around the lodge-fires and repeated in the 
war-dance. The words I speak will go out among 
the tribes, and no man can destroy them. Yes, they 
go out words, but they will come back arrows and 
war in the day of vengeance when the tribes shall rise 
against the oppressor. 

“ I have spoken, my words are done.” 

He stood erect and motionless. The wrath and dis- 
dain passed from his features, and stoicism settled 
over them like a mask of stone. Multnomah’s cold 
regard had not faltered a moment under the chiefs 
invective. No denunciation could shake that iron 
self-control. 


AN INDIAN TRIAL. 


139 


The rebellious chiefs interchanged meaning glances ; 
the throng of malcontents outside the grove pressed 
closer upon the ring of Willamette warriors, who were 
still standing or squatting idly around it. More 
than one weapon could be seen among them in defi- 
ance of the war-chiefs prohibition ; and the presage 
of a terrible storm darkened on those grim, wild 
faces. The more peaceably disposed bands began to 
draw themselves apart. An ominous silence crept 
through the crowd as they felt the crisis approaching. 

But Multnomah saw nothing, and the circle of Wil- 
lamette warriors were stolidly indifferent. 

Can they not see that the tribes are on the verge 
of revolt?” thought Cecil, anxiously, fearing a bloody 
massacre. 

You have heard the words of the rebel. What 
have you to say? Let the white man speak first, as 
he was the last to join us.” 

Cecil rose and pictured in the common Willamette 
tongue, with which he had familiarized himself during 
his long stay with the Cayuses, the terrible results of 
disunion, the desolating consequences of war, — tribe 
clashing against tribe and their common enemies 
trampling on them all. Even those who were on the 
verge of insurrection listened reverently to the white 
wizard,” who had drawn wisdom from the Great Spirit ; 
but it did not shake their purpose. Their own dream- 
ers had talked with the Great Spirit too, in trance 
and vision, and had promised them victory over 
the Willamettes. 

Tohomish followed ; and Cecil, who had known 
some of the finest orators in Europe, listened in 
amazement to a voice the most musical he had ever 


140 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

heard. He looked in wonder on the repulsive fea- 
tures that seemed so much at variance with those 
melodious intonations. Tohomish pleaded for union 
and for the death of the rebel. It seemed for a moment 
as if his soft, persuasive accents would win the day, 
but it was only for a moment j the spell was broken 
the instant he ceased. Then Snoqualmie spoke. One 
by one, the great sachems of the Willamettes gave 
their voices for death. Many of the friendly allies 
did not give their decision at all, but said to 
Multnomah, — 

‘‘You speak for us ; your word shall be our word.” 

When the dissatisfied chiefs were asked for their 
counsel, the sullen reply was given, — 

“ I have no tongue to-day ; ” or “ I do not know.” 

Multnomah seemed not to notice their answers. 
Only those who knew him best saw a gleam kindling 
in his eyes that told of a terrible vengeance drawing 
near. The captive waited passively, seeming neither 
to see nor hear. 

At length all had spoken or had an opportunity to 
speak, and Multnomah rose to give the final decision. 
Beyond the circle of Willamettes, who were still indif- 
ferent and unconcerned, the discontented bands had 
thrown aside all concealment, and stood with bared 
weapons in their hands; all murmurs had ceased; 
there was a deathlike silence in the dense mob, which 
seemed gathering itself together for a forward rush, — 
the commencement of a fearful massacre. 

Behind it were the friendly Cayuses, but not a 
weapon could be seen among them. The chief saw 
all; saw too that his enemies only waited for him 
to pronounce sentence upon the captive, — that that 


AN INDIAN TRIAL. 


141 

was the preconcerted signal for attack. Now among 
some of the tribes sentence was pronounced not by 
word but by gesture ; there was the gesture for 
acquittal, the gesture for condemnation. 

Multnomah lifted his right hand. There was 
breathless suspense. What would it be ? Fixing his 
eyes on the armed malcontents who were waiting to 
spring, he clinched his hand and made a downward 
gesture, as if striking a blow. It was the death- signal, 
the death-sentence. 

In an instant a deafening shout rang through the 
grove, and the bloodthirsty mob surged forward to the 
massacre. 

Then, so suddenly that it blended with and seemed 
a part of the same shout, the dreaded Willamette war- 
cry shook the earth. Quick as thought, the Willam- 
ettes who had been lounging so idly around the 
grove were on their feet, their blankets thrown aside, 
the weapons that had been concealed under them 
ready in their hands. A wall of indomitable warriors 
had leaped up around the grove. At the same mo- 
ment, the Cayuses in the rear bared their weapons 
and shouted back the Willamette war-cry. 

The rebels were staggered. The trap was sprung 
on them before they knew that there was a trap. 
Those in front shrank back from the iron warriors 
of Multnomah, those in the rear wavered before the 
fierce Cayuses. They paused, a swaying flood of 
humanity, caught between two lines of rock. 


142 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


CHAPTER V. 

SENTENCED TO THE WOLF-DEATH. 

The other, great of soul, changed not 
Countenance stern. 

Dante. 

I N that momentary pause Multnomah did something 
that showed the cold disdainfulness of his char- 
acter as nothing else could have done. He had given 
the death-sign j he had not yet told how or when death 
was to be inflicted. He gave the sentence now^ as if 
in utter scorn of the battle-cloud that hung quivering, 
ready to burst. 

‘‘ He would have tom the confederacy to pieces ; 
let him be left bound in the wood of the wolves, and 
tom limb from limb by them as he would have rent 
the tribes asunder.” 

The two warriors who had brought the criminal 
into the council came forward, flung a covering over 
his head and face, and led him away. Perhaps no 
custom of the northwestern Indians was more sombre 
than this, — the covering of the culprit’s eyes from 
the time of his sentence till his death. Never again 
were those eyes to behold the sun. 

Then, and not till then, did Multnomah turn his 
gaze on the malcontents, who stood, desperate but 
hesitating, hemmed in by the Willamettes and the 
Cayuses. 


SENTENCED TO THE WOLF-DEATH. 143 

You have chosen the tomahawk instead of the 
peace-pipe. Shall Multnomah choose the tomahawk 
also ? Know you not that Multnomah holds your lives 
in his hand, and that he can crush you like an egg- 
shell if he chooses ? 

The war-chief lifted his arm as he spoke, and slowly 
closed his fingers till his hand was clinched. The 
eyes of Willamette and tributary alike hung on those 
slowly closing fingers, with their own strained on their 
tomahawks. That was half the death-signal ! Would 
he give the other half, — the downward gesture ? The 
bafiled rebels tasted all the bitterness of death in that 
agonizing suspense. They felt that their lives were 
literally in his grasp ; and so the stern autocrat wished 
them to feel, for he knew it was a lesson they would 
never forget. 

At length he spoke. 

^‘Drop your weapons and Multnomah will forget 
what he has seen, and all will be well. Strike but a 
blow, and not one of you will ever go back over the 
trail to his home.” 

Then he turned to the chiefs, and there was that in 
his tones which told them to expect no mercy. 

“ How comes it that your braves lift their toma- 
hawks against Multnomah in his own council and on 
his own land ? Speak ! chiefs must answer for their 
people.” 

There was sullen silence for a little time ; then one 
of them muttered that it was the young men ; their 
blood was hot, they were rash, and the chiefs could 
not control them. 

‘^Can you not control your young men? Then 
you are not fit to be chiefs, and are chiefs no longer.” 


144 the bridge of THE GODS. 

He gave a signal to certain of the Willamettes who 
had come up behind the rebellious leaders, as they 
stood confused and hesitating in the council. They 
were seized and their hands bound ere they could 
defend themselves ; indeed, they made no effort to 
do so, but submitted doggedly. 

Take them down the Wauna in the sea-canoes 
and sell them as slaves to the Nootkas who hunt seal 
along the coast. Their people shall see their faces 
no more. Slaves in the ice-land of the North shall 
they live and die.” 

The swarthy cheeks of the captives grew ashen, and 
a shudder went through that trapped and surrounded 
mob of malcontents. Indian slavery was always terri- 
ble j but to be slaves to the brutal Indians of the north, 
starved, beaten, mutilated, chilled, and benumbed in 
a land of perpetual frost; to perish at last in the 
bleak snow and winter of almost arctic coasts, — 
that was a fate worse than the torture-stake. 

Dreadful as it was, not a chief asked for mercy. 
Silently they went with their captors out of the grove 
and down the bank to the river’s edge. A large sea- 
canoe, manned by Chinook paddlers, was floating at 
the beach. They quickly embarked, the paddles 
dipped, the canoe glided out into the current and 
down the stream. In a few moments the cotton- 
wood along the river’s edge hid it from sight, and 
the rebels were forever beyond the hope of rescue. 

Swift and merciless had the vengeance of Multno- 
mah fallen, and the insurrection had been crushed at 
a blow. It had taken but a moment, and it had all 
passed under the eyes of the malcontents, who were 
still surrounded by the loyal warriors. 


SENTENCED TO THE WOLF-DEATH. 145 


When the canoe had disappeared and the gaze of 
that startled and awed multitude came back to Mult- 
nomah, he made a gesture of dismissal. The lines drew 
aside and the rebels were free. 

While they were still bewildered and uncertain what 
to do, Multnomah instantly and with consummate 
address called the attention of the council to other 
things, thereby apparently assuming that the trouble 
was ended and giving the malcontents to understand 
that no further punishment was intended. Sullenly, 
reluctantly, they seemed to accept the situation, 
and no further indications of revolt were seen that 
day. 

Popular young men, the bravest of their several 
tribes, were appointed by Multnomah to fill the va- 
cant chieftainships ; and that did much toward allay- 
ing the discontent. Moreover, some troubles between 
different tribes of the confederacy, which had been 
referred to him for arbitration, were decided with rare 
sagacity. At length the council ended for the day, 
the star of the Willamettes still in the ascendant, the 
revolt seemingly subdued. 

So the first great crisis passed. 

That evening a little band of Willamette warriors 
led the rebel sachem, still bound and blindfolded, 
down to the river’s bank, where a canoe lay waiting 
them. His wife followed and tried to enter it with 
him, as if determined to share his fortunes to the very 
last; but the guard thrust her rudely away, and 
started the canoe. As it moved away she caught 
the prow wildly, despairingly, as if she could not let 
her warrior go. One of the guards struck her hands 
10 


146 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

brutally with his paddle, and she released her hold. 
The boat glided out into the river. Not a word of 
farewell had passed between the condemned man and 
his wife, for each disdained to show emotion in the 
presence of the enemy. She remained on the bank 
looking after him, mute and despondent, — a forlorn 
creature clothed in rags and emaciated with hunger, 
an outcast from all the tribes. She might have been 
regarded as a symbolic figure representing woman 
among the Indians, as she stood there with her bruised 
hands, throbbing with pain where the cruel blow had 
fallen, hanging, in sullen scorn of pain, uncared for by 
her side. So she stood watching the canoe glide down 
the river, till it was swallowed up in the gathering 
shadows of evening. 

The canoe dropped down the river to a lonely point 
on the northern shore, a place much frequented by 
wolves. There, many miles below the encampment 
on the island, they disembarked and took the captive 
into the wood. He walked among them with a firm 
and even tread ; there was no sign of flinching, though 
he must have known that his hour was close at hand. 
They bound him prostrate at the foot of an oak, 
tying him to the hard, tough roots that ran over the 
ground like a network, and from which the earth had 
been washed away, so that thongs could be passed 
around them. 

Head and foot they bound him, drawing the raw- 
hide thongs so tight that they sank into the flesh, and 
knotting them, till no effort possible to him could 
have disentangled him. It was on his lips to ask 
them to leave one arm free, so that he might at least 
die fighting, though it were with but one naked hand. 


SENTENCED TO THE WOLF-DEATH. 147 

But he hated them too much to ask even that small 
favor, and so submitted in disdainful silence. 

The warriors all went back to the canoe, except 
one, an old hunter, famed for his skill in imitating 
every cry of bird or beast. Standing beside the bound 
and prostrate man, he sent forth into the forest the 
cry of a wolf. It rang in a thousand echoes and died 
away, evoking no response. He listened a moment 
with bated breath, but could hear nothing but the 
deep heart-beat of the man at his feet. Another cry, 
with its myriad echoes, was followed by the oppressive 
sense of stillness that succeeds an outcry in a lonely 
wood. Then came a faint, a far-off sound, the answer 
of a wolf to a supposed mate. The Indian replied, 
and the answer sounded nearer ; then another blended 
with it, as the pack began to gather. Again the In- 
dian gave the cry, wild and wolfish, as only a barba- 
rian, half-beast by virtue of his own nature, could have 
uttered it. An awful chorus of barking and howling 
burst through the forest as the wolves came on, eager 
for blood. 

The Indian turned and rejoined his comrades at 
the canoe. They pushed out into the river, but held 
the boat in the current by an occasional paddle- stroke, 
and waited listening. Back at the foot of the tree 
the captive strained every nerve and muscle in one 
mighty effort to break the cords that bound him ; but 
it was useless, and he lay back with set teeth and rigid 
muscles, while his eyes sought in vain through their 
thick covering to see the approach of his foes. Pres- 
ently a fierce outburst of howls and snarls told the 
listeners that the wolves had found their prey. They 
lingered and listened a little longer, but no sound or 


148 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

cry was heard to tell of the last agony under those 
rending fangs ; the chief died in silence. Then the 
paddles were dipped again in the water, and the canoe 
glided up the river to the camp. 

When they reached the shore they found the rebel’s 
wife awaiting them in the place where they had left 
her. She asked no questions ; she only came close 
and looked at their faces in the dusk, and read there 
the thing she sought to know. Then she went silently 
away. In a little while the Indian wail for the dead 
was sounding through the forest. 

“What is that?” asked the groups around the 
camp-fires. 

“ The rebel chiefs wife wailing the death-wail for 
her husband,” was the low reply; and in that way 
the tribes knew that the sentence had been carried 
out. Many bands were there, of many languages, but 
all knew what that death-wail meant the instant it 
fell upon their ears. Multnomah heard it as he sat 
in council with his chiefs, and there was something 
in it that shook even his iron heart ; for all the wilder, 
more superstitious elements of the Indians thrilled to 
two things, — the war-cry and the death-wail. He 
dismissed his chiefs and went to his lodge. On the 
way he encountered Tohomish, lurking, as was his 
wont, under the shadow of the trees. 

“ What think you now, Tohomish, you who love 
darkness and shadow, what think you? Is not the 
arm of the Willamette strong? Has it not put down 
revolt to-day, and held the tribes together? ” 

The Pine Voice looked at him sorrowfully. 

“ The vision I told in the council has come back 
to me again. The cry of woe I heard far off then is 


SENTENCED TO THE WOLF-DEATH. 149 

nearer now, and the throng on the death-trail passes 
thicker and swifter. That which covered their faces 
is lifted, and their faces are the faces of Willam- 
ettes, and Multnomah is among them. The time is 
close at hand.” 

Say this before our enemies, and, strong tomano- 
wos though you are, you die ! ” said the chief, laying 
his hand on his tomahawk. But the seer was gone, 
and Multnomah stood alone among the trees. 

Every evening at dusk, the widow of the rebel 
sachem went out into the woods near the camp and 
wailed her dead. Every night that wild, desolate 
lament was lifted and rang through the great en- 
campment, — a cry that was accusation, defiance, and 
lament ; and even Multnomah dared not silence her, 
for among the Indians a woman lamenting her dead 
was sacred. So, while Multnomah labored and plot- 
ted for union by day, that mournful cry raised the 
spirit of wrath and rebellion by night. And thus the 
dead liberator was half avenged. 



BOOK IV. 


THE LOVE TALE. 


CHAPTER I. 


THE INDIAN TOWN, 


The bare ground with hoarie mosse bestrewed 
Must be their bed ; their pillow was unsowed 
And the frutes of the forrest was their feast. 


The Faerie Queene, 


EVER before had there come to Cecil so grand 



^ an opportunity for disseminating gospel truth. 
The work of half a lifetime might be done in a few 


days. 


^‘The tribes are all gathered together in one en- 
campment, and I can talk with them all, tell them of 
God, of the beauty of heaven and of the only Way. 
Then, when they disperse, they will carry my teaching 
in every direction, and so it will be scattered through- 
out all this wild land.” 

This was the thought that came to Cecil when he 
awoke on the morning after the trial Now was the 
time to work ! Now was the time for every element 
of argument, persuasion, and enthusiasm to be exerted 
to the utmost. 

Earnestly did he pray that morning, kneeling in his 
lodge beside his couch of furs, that God would be -with 


152 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

and help him. And as he prayed, warm and glow- 
ing was the love and tenderness that filled his heart. 
When the day was a little more advanced, he entered 
upon his work. The camp was astir with life ; nearly 
all had finished their morning meal, and the various 
employments and diversions of the day were begun. 
Each tribe or band had pitched its lodges apart, 
though not far from the others. It was not so much 
an encampment as a group of njany encampments, 
and the whole made up a scattered town of huts and 
wigwams. 

A precarious and uncertain quiet had succeeded the 
agitation of the day before. Multnomah’s energy had 
awed the malcontents into temporary submission, and 
the different bands were mingling freely with one 
another; though here and there a chief or warrior 
looked on contemptuously, standing moodily apart, 
wrapped in his blanket. Now and then when a Willa- 
mette passed a group who were talking and gesticu- 
lating animatedly they would become silent all at once 
till the representative of the dreaded race was out of 
hearing, when a storm of indignant gutterals would 
burst forth; but there were no other indications of 
hostility. 

Groups were strolling from place to place observing 
curiously the habits and customs of other tribes ; the 
common Willamette tongue, precursor of the more 
modern Chinook jargon, furnishing a means of inter- 
course. Everywhere Cecil found talk, barter, diver- 
sion. It was a rude caricature of civilization, the 
picture of society in its infancy, the rough dramati- 
zation of that phase through which every race passes 
in its evolution from barbarism. 


THE INDIAN TOWN. 


153 


At one place, a hunter from the interior was barter- 
ing furs for hiagua shells to a native of the sea-coast. 
At another, a brave skilled in wood-work had his stock 
of bows and arrows spread out before him, and an ad- 
miring crowd were standing around looking on. But 
the taciturn brave sat coolly polishing and staining his 
arrows as if he were totally unconscious of spectators, 
until the magical word “ buy ” was mentioned, when 
he at once awoke to life and drove a bargain in bow 
and quiver versus dried berries and ^4ckters” that 
would have done credit to a Yankee. 

At one place sat an old warrior from the upper 
Columbia, making arrow-heads, chipping off the little 
scales of flint with infinite patience, literally wearing 
the stone into the requisite shape. Beside him lay a 
small pack of flints brought from beyond the moun- 
tains, for such stone was rarely found along the lower 
Columbia. Squaws sat in front of their wigwams sew- 
ing mats, — carefully sorting the rushes, putting big 
ends with little ends, piercing each with a bodkin, and 
sewing them all together with a long bone needle 
threaded with buckskin or sinew. Others were weav- 
ing that water-tight wickerwork which was, perhaps, 
the highest art to which the Oregon Indians ever 
attained. Here a band of Indians were cooking, 
feasting, laughing, shouting around a huge sturgeon 
captured the night before. There a circle of gamblers 
were playing “hand,” — passing a small stick secretly 
from hand to hand and guessing whose hand contained 
it, — singing as they played that monotonous “ ho-ha, 
ho-ha, ho-ha,” which was the inseparable accompani- 
ment of dancing, gambling, and horseback riding. 

Among them all Cecil moved with the calm dignity 


154 the bridge of the gods. 

he had acquired from long intercourse with the In- 
dians. Wherever he went there was silence and re- 
spect, for was he not the great white medicine-man? 
Gambling circles paused in the swift passage of the 
stick and the monotone of the chant to look and to 
comment ; buyers and sellers stopped to gaze and to 
question; children who had been building minia- 
ture wigwams of sticks or floating bark canoes in the 
puddles, ran away at his approach and took shelter 
in the thickets, watching him with twinkling black 
eyes. 

Wherever there was opportunity, he stopped and 
talked, scattering seed-thoughts in the dark minds 
of the Indians. Wherever he paused a crowd would 
gather; whenever he entered a wigwam a throng 
collected at the door. 

Let us glance for a moment into the domestic life 
of the Indians as Cecil saw it that morning. 

He enters one of the large bark huts of the Willa- 
mette Indians, a long, low building, capable of shel- 
tering sixty or seventy persons. The part around the 
door is painted to represent a man’s face, and the 
entrance is through the mouth. Within, he finds a 
spacious room perhaps eighty or a hundred feet long 
by twenty wide, with rows of rude bunks rising tier 
above tier on either side. In the centre are the 
stones and ashes of the hearth ; above is an aperture 
in the roof for the escape of smoke ; around the 
hearth mats are spread to sit upon ; the bare ground, 
hard and trodden, forms the only floor, and the roof 
is made of boards that have been split out with mallet 
and wedges. 

Cecil enters and stands a moment in silence ; then 


THE INDIAN TOWN. 


155 


the head of the house advances and welcomes him. 
The best mat is spread for him to sit upon ; food is 
brought, — pounded fish, nuts, and berries, and a kind 
of bread made of roots cooked, crushed together, and 
cut in slices when cold. All this is served on a wooden 
platter, and he must eat whether hungry or not ; for 
to refuse would be the grossest affront that could be 
offered a Willamette host, especially if it were pre- 
sented by his own hands. The highest honor that a 
western Oregon Indian could do his guest was to wait 
on him instead of letting his squaw do it. The Indian 
host stands beside Cecil and says, in good-humored 
hospitality, Eat, eat much,” nor is he quite pleased 
if he thinks that his visitor slights the offered food. 
When the guest can be no longer persuaded to eat 
more, the food is removed, the platter is washed in 
water, and dried with a wisp of twisted grass ; a small 
treasure of tobacco is produced from a little buckskin 
pocket and a part of it carefully mixed with dried 
leaves ; ^ the pipe is filled and smoked. Then, and 
not till then, may the Indian host listen to the talk of 
the white man. 

So it was in lodge after lodge ; he must first eat, be 
it ever so little. Two centuries later, the Methodist 
and Congregational missionaries found themselves con- 
fronted with the same oppressive hospitality among 
the Rocky Mountain Indians.^ Nay, they need not 
visit a wigwam; let them but stroll abroad through 
the .village, and if they were popular and the camp 
was well supplied with buffalo-meat, messengers would 
come with appalling frequency, bearing the laconic 

1 Lewis and Clark. 

® See Parkman’s “ Oregon Trail , ” also, Parker’s work on Oregon. 


156 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

invitation, “ Come and eat ; ” and the missionary 
must go, or give offence, even though he had already 
gone to half a dozen wigwams on the same errand. 
There is a grim humor in a missionary’s eating fresh 
buffalo-meat in the cause of religion until he is 
like to burst, and yet heroically going forth to choke 
down a few mouthfuls more, lest he offend some 
dusky convert. 

At one house Cecil witnessed a painful yet comical 
scene. The Willamettes were polygamists, each brave 
having as many wives as he was able to buy; and 
Cecil was in a lodge where the brother of the head 
man of that lodge brought home his second wife. At 
the entrance of the second wife, all gay in Indian 
finery, the first did not manifest the sisterly spirit 
proper for the occasion. After sitting awhile in sullen 
silence, she arose and began to kick the fire about, 
accompanying that performance with gutteral excla- 
mations addressed to no one in particular ; she struck 
the dog, which chanced to be in the way, sending it 
yelping from the wigwam ; and then, having worked 
herself into a rage, began to scold her husband, who 
listened grimly but said nothing. At last she turned 
on her new-found sister, struck her, and began to lay 
rending hands on the finery that their mutual husband 
had given her. That was instantly resented ; and in 
a few moments the squaws were rolling on the floor, 
biting, scratching, and pulling each other’s hair with 
the fury of devils incarnate. The dogs, attracted by 
the tumult, ran in and began to bark at them ; the 
Indians outside the hut gathered at the door, looking 
in and laughing ; the husband contemplated them as 
they rolled fighting at his feet, and then looked at 


THE INDIAN TOWN. 


157 


Cecil. It was undoubtedly trying to Indian dignity, 
but the warrior sustained his admirably. Bad, very 
bad,” was the only comment he allowed himself to 
make. Cecil took his leave, and the brave kept up 
his air of indifference until the white man had gone. 
Then he quietly selected a cudgel from the heap of 
fire-wood by the doorway, and in a short time peace 
reigned in the wigwam. 

In a lodge not far away, Cecil witnessed another 
scene yet more barbarous than this. He found a 
little blind boy sitting on the ground near the fire, 
surrounded by a quantity of fish-bones which he had 
been picking. He was made a subject for the taunt- 
ing jibes and laughter of a number of men and women 
squatting around him. His mother sat by in the most 
cruel apathy and unconcern, and only smiled when 
Cecil expressed commiseration for her unfortunate 
and peculiarly unhappy child. It had been neglected 
and seemed almost starved. Those around apparently 
took pleasure in tormenting it and rendering it miser- 
able, and vied with each other in applying to it insult- 
ing and degrading epithets. The little articles that 
Cecil gave to it, in the hope that the Indians seeing 
him manifest an interest in it would treat it more ten- 
derly, it put to its mouth eagerly ; but not finding 
them eatable, it threw them aside in disgust. Cecil 
turned away sick at heart. Worn, already weary, this 
last sight was intolerable ; and he went out into the 
woods, away from the camp. 

But as he walked along he seemed to see the child 
again, so vividly had it impressed his imagination. It 
rose before him in the wood, when the noise of the 
camp lay far behind ; it seemed to turn its sightless 


I $8 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

eyes upon him and reach out its emaciated arms as if 
appealing for help.^ 

Out in the wood he came across an Indian sitting 
on a log, his face buried in his hands, his attitude in- 
dicating sickness or despondency. He looked up as 
Cecil approached. It was the young Willamette run- 
ner who had been his companion on the journey down 
the Columbia. His face was haggard; he was evi- 
dently very sick. The missionary stopped and tried 
to talk with him, but could evoke little response, ex- 
cept that he did not want to talk, and that he wanted 
to be left alone. He seemed so moody and irritable 
that Cecil thought it best to leave him. His experi- 
ence was that talking with a sick Indian was very much 
like stirring up a wounded rattlesnake. So he left the 
runner and went on into the forest, seeking the soli- 
tude without which he could scarcely have lived amid 
the degrading barbarism around him. His spirit re- 
quired frequent communion with God and Nature, 
else he would have died of weariness and sickness 
of heart. 

Wandering listlessly, he went on further and further 
from the camp, never dreaming of what lay before 
him, or of the wild sweet destiny to which that dim 
Indian trail was leading him through the shadowy 
wood. 

1 See Townsend’s Narrative, pages 182-183. 


THE WHITE WOMAN IN THE WOOD. 159 


CHAPTER II. 

THE WHITE WOMAN IN THE WOOD. 

I seek a sail that never looms from out the purple haze 
At rosy dawn, or fading eve, or in the noontide’s blaze. 

Celia Thaxter. 

^ ECIL walked listlessly on through the wood. He 
^ was worn out by the day’s efforts, though it was 
as yet but the middle of the afternoon. There was 
a feeling of exhaustion in his lungs, a fluttering pain 
about his heart, the result of years of over-work upon 
a delicate frame. With this feeling of physical weak- 
ness came always the fear that his strength might 
give way ere his work was done. Nor was this all. 
In these times of depression, the longing to see again 
the faces of his friends, to have again the sweet grace- 
ful things of the life that was forever closed to him, 
rushed over him in a bitter flood. 

The trail led him to the bank of the Columbia, 
some distance below the encampment. He looked 
out over the blue river sweeping majestically on, the 
white snow-peaks, the canyons deep in the shadows 
of afternoon, the dense - forest beyond the river ex- 
tending away to the unknown and silent North as far 
as his eyes could reach. 

“ It is wonderful, wonderful ! ” he thought. But 1 
would give it all to look upon one white face.” 


i6o 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


So musing, he passed on down the bank of the 
river. He was now perhaps two miles from the camp 
and seemingly in complete solitude. After a little the 
path turned away from the beach and led toward the 
interior. As he entered the woodland he came upon 
several Indian sentinels who lay, bow in hand, beside 
the path. They sprang up, as if to intercept his pas- 
sage j but seeing that it was the white shaman whom 
Multnomah had honored, and who had sat at the 
council with the great sachems, they let him go on. 
Cecil indistinctly remembered having heard from 
some of the Indians that this part of the island was 
strictly guarded ; he had forgotten why. So absorbed 
was he in his gloomy reflections that he did not stop 
to question the sentinels, but went on, not thinking 
that he might be treading on forbidden ground. By 
and by the path emerged from the wood upon a little 
prairie ; the cottonwoods shut out the Indians from 
him, and he was again alone. The sunshine lay warm 
and golden on the little meadow, and he strolled for- 
ward mechanically, thinking how like it was to some 
of the sylvan lawns of his own New England for- 
ests. Again the shade of trees fell over the path. 
He looked up, his mind full of New England mem- 
ories, and saw something that made his heart stand 
still. For there, not far froni him, stood a girl clad 
in soft flowing drapery, the dress of a white woman. 
In Massachusetts a woman’s dress would have been 
the last thing Cecil would have noticed. Now, so 
long accustomed to the Indian squaws’ rough gar- 
ments of skin or plaited bark, the sight of that grace- 
ful woven cloth sent through him an indescribable 
thrill. 


THE WHITE WOMAN- IN THE WOOD. l6i 


He went on, his eager eyes drinking in the welcome 
sight, yet scarcely believing what he saw. 

She had not yet observed him. The profile of her 
half-averted face was very sweet and feminine; her 
form was rounded, and her hair fell in long black 
ringlets to the shoulders. He was in the presence of 
a young and beautiful woman, — a white woman ! All 
this he noted at a glance ; noted, too, the drooping 
lashes, the wistful lines about the lips, the mournful 
expression that shadowed the beauty of her face. 

Who was she ? Where could she have come from ? 

She heard the approaching footsteps and turned 
toward him. Absolute bewilderment was on her face 
for a moment, and then it glowed with light and joy. 
Her dark, sad eyes sparkled. She was radiant, as if 
some great, long-looked for happiness had come to 
her. She came eagerly toward him, holding out her 
hands in impetuous welcome ; saying something in a 
language he did not understand, but which he felt 
could not be Indian, so refined and pleasing were 
the tones. 

He answered he knew not what, in his own tongue, 
and she paused perplexed. Then he spoke again, 
this time in Willamette. 

She shrank back involuntarily. 

‘^That language? ” she replied in the same tongue, 
but with a tremor of disappointment in her voice. 

I thought you were of my mother’s race and spoke 
her language. But you ai'e white, like her people ? ” 

She had given him both her hands, and he stood 
holding them; looking down into her eager, lifted 
face, where a great hope and a great doubt in min- 
gled light and shadow strove together. 


i 62 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS, 


“ I am a white man. I came from a land far to 
the East. But who are you, and how came you 
here? ” 

She did not seem to hear the last words, only the 
first. 

No, no,” she protested eagerly, “ you came not 
from the East but from the West, the land across the 
sea that my mother came from in the ship that was 
wrecked.” And she withdrew one hand and pointed 
toward the wooded range beyond which lay the 
Pacific. 

He shook his head. No, there are white people 
in those lands too, but I never saw them. I came 
from the East,” he said, beginning to surmise that 
she must be an Asiatic. She drew away the hand 
that he still held in his, and her eyes filled with 
tears. 

I thought you were one of my mother’s people,” 
she murmured; and he felt that the pang of an ex- 
ceeding disappointment was filling her heart. 

Who are you? ” he asked gently. 

“The daughter of Multnomah.” 

Cecil remembered now what he had heard of the 
dead white wife of Multnomah, and of her daughter, 
who, it was understood among the tribes, was to be 
given to Snoqualmie. He noticed, too, for the first 
time the trace of the Indian in her expression, as the 
light faded from it and it settled back into the 
despondent look habitual to it. All that was chival- 
rous in his nature went out to the fair young crea- 
ture; all his being responded to the sting of her 
disappointment. 

“ I am not what you hoped I was, but your face is 


THE WHITE WOMAN IN THE WOOD. 163 

like the face of the women of my own land. Shall we 
not be friends ? ” 

She looked up wistfully at the handsome and noble 
countenance above her, so different from the stolid 
visages she had known so long. 

“ Yes ; you are not Indian.” 

In that one expression she unconsciously told 
Cecil how her sensitive nature shrank from the bar- 
barism around her; how the tastes and aspirations 
she had inherited from her mother reached out for 
better and higher things. 

In a little while they were seated on a grassy bank 
in the shade of the trees, talking together. She bade 
him tell her of his people. She listened intently ; the 
bright, beautiful look came back as she heard the tale. 

‘‘ They are kind to women, instead of making 
them mere burden-bearers ; they have pleasant 
homes ; they dwell in cities ? Then they are like 
my mother’s people.” 

‘‘ They are gentle, kind, humane. They have all 
the arts that light up life and make it beautiful, — not 
like the tribes of this grim, bloodstained land.” 

“ This land ! ” Her face darkened and she lifted 
her hand in a quick, repelling gesture. This land 
is a grave. The clouds lie black and heavy on the 
spirit that longs for the sunlight and cannot reach it.” 
She turned to him again. Go on, your words are 
music.” 

He continued, and she listened till the story of 
his country and his wanderings was done. When he 
ended, she drew a glad, deep breath ; her eyes were 
sparkling with joy. 

“ I am content,” she said, in a voice in which there 


1 64 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

was a deep heart-thrill of happiness. “ Since my 
mother died I have been alone, all alone ; and I 
longed, oh so often, for some one who talked and felt 
as she did to come to me, and now you have come. 
I sat cold and shivering in the night a long time, but 
the light and warmth have come at last. Truly, Allah 
is good ! ” 

Allah ! ” 

‘^Yes; he was my mother’s God, as the Great 
Spirit is my father’s.” 

They are both names for the same All Father,” 
replied Cecil. They mean the same thing, even as 
the sun is called by many names by many tribes, yet 
there is but the one sun.” 

“ Then I am glad. It is good to learn that both 
prayed to the one God, though they did not know 
it. But my mother taught me to use the name of 
Allah, and not the other. And while my father and 
the tribes call me by my Indian name, ^Wallulah,’ 
she gave me another, a secret name, that I was never 
to forget.” 

“ What is it?” 

I have never told it, but I will tell you, for you 
can understand.” 

And she gave him a singularly melodious name, of 
a character entirely different from any he had ever 
heard, but which he guessed to be Arabic or Hindu. 

It means, ‘ She who watches for the morning.’ 
My mother told me never to forget it, and to remem- 
ber that I was not to let myself grow to be like the 
Indians, but to pray to Allah, and to watch and hope, 
and that sometime the morning would come and I 
would be saved from the things around me. And 


THE WHITE WOMAN IN THE WOOD. 165 

now you have come and the dawn comes with 
you.” 

Her glad, thankful glance met his ; the latent grace 
and mobility of her nature, all roused and vivid under 
his influence, transfigured her face, making it deli- 
cately lovely. A great pang of longing surged through 
him. 

“ Oh,” he thought, had I not become a missionary, 
I might have met and loved some one like her ! I 
might have filled my life with much that is now gone 
from it forever ! ” 

For eight years he had seen only the faces of savage 
women and still more savage men ; for eight years his 
life had been steeped in bitterness, and all that was 
tender or romantic in his nature had been cramped, 
as in iron fetters, by the coarseness and stolidity around 
him. Now, after all that dreary time, he met one who 
had the beauty and the refinement of his own race. 
Was it any wonder that her glance, the touch of her 
dress or hair, the soft tones of her voice, had for him 
an indescribable charm? Was it any wonder that his 
heart went out to her in a yearning tenderness that 
although not love was dangerously akin to it? 

He was startled at the sweet and burning tumult of 
emotion she was kindling within him. What was he 
thinking of? He must shake these feelings off, or 
leave her. Leave her ! The gloom of the savagery 
that awaited him at the camp grew tenfold blacker 
than ever. All the light earth held for him seemed 
gathered into the presence of this dark-eyed girl who 
sat talking so musically, so happily, by his side. 

1 must go,” he forced himself to say at length. 
“The sun is almost down.” 


i66 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


“ Must you go so soon? ” 

I will come again if you wish.” 

But you must not go yet ; wait till the sun reaches 
the mountain-tops yonder. I want you to tell me 
more about your own land.” 

So he lingered and talked while the sun sank lower 
and lower in the west. It seemed to him that it had 
never gone down so fast before. 

I must go now,” he said, rising as the sun's red 
disk sank behind the mountains. 

** It is not late ; see, the sun is shining yet on the 
brow of the snow mountains.” 

Both looked at the peaks that towered grandly in 
the light of the sunken sun while all the world below 
lay in shadow. Together they watched the mighty 
miracle of the afterglow on Mount Tacoma, the soft 
rose-flush that transfigured the mountain till it grew 
transparent, delicate, wonderful. 

That is what my life is now, — since you have 
brought the light to the ‘ watcher for the morning ; ’ ” 
and she looked up at him with a bright, trustful smile. 

‘‘ Alas? ” thought Cecil, “ it is not the light of morn- 
ing but of sunset.” 

Slowly the radiance faded, the rose tint passed ; the 
mountain grew white and cold under their gaze, like 
the face of death. Wallulah shuddered as if it were 
a prophecy. 

‘‘You will come back to-morrow?” she said, look- 
ing at him with her large, appealing eyes. 

“ I will come,” he said. 

“ It will seem long till your return, yet I have lived 
so many years waiting for that which has come at last 
that I have learned to be patient.” 


THE WHITE WOMAN IN THE WOOD. 167 

Ask God to help you in your hours of loneliness 
and they will not seem so long and dark,” said Cecil, 
whose soul was one tumultuous self-reproach that he 
had let the time go by without telling her more of 
God. 

Ah ! ” she said in a strange, wistful way, I have 
prayed to him so much, but he could not fill all my 
heart. I wanted so to touch a hand and look on a 
face like my mother’s. But God has sent you, and 
so I know he must be good.” 

They parted, and he went back to the camp. 

Is my mission a failure ? ” he thought, as he 
walked along, clinching his hands in furious anger 
with himself. “ Why do I let a girl’s beauty move 
me thus, and she the promised wife of another? 
How dare I think of aught beside the work God has 
sent me here to do? Oh, the shame and guilt of 
such weakness ! I will be faithful. I will never look 
upon her face again ! ” 

He emerged from the wood into the camp; its 
multitudinous sounds were all around him, and never 
had the coarseness and savagery of Indian life seemed 
so repellent as now, when he came back to it with his 
mind full of Wallulah’s grace and loveliness. It was 
harsh discord after music. 

Stripped and painted barbarians were hallooing, 
feasting, dancing ; the whole camp was alive with 
boisterous hilarity, the result of a day of good fellow- 
ship. Mothers were calling their children in the 
dusk and young men were sportively answering. 
Here I am, mother.” Here and there, Indians who 
had been feasting all day lay like gorged anacondas 
beside the remnant of their meal ; others, who had 


1 68 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS, 

been gambling, were talking loudly of the results of 
the game. 

Through it all the white man walked with swift 
footsteps, looking neither to the right nor the left, 
till he gained his lodge. He flung himself on his bed 
and lay there, his fingers strained together convul- 
sively, his nerves throbbing with pain; vainly strug- 
gling with regret, vainly repeating to himself that he 
cared nothing for love and home, that he had put all 
those things from him, that he was engrossed now 
only in his work. 

“ Never, never ! It can never be.’* 

And the English exploring-ship in Yaquina Bay was 
to weigh anchor on the morrow, and sail up nearer 
along the unknown coast. The Indians had all de- 
serted the sea-board for the council. Would Cecil 
hear? Would any one see the sail and bring the 
news? 



T ^ILL kill him 







fci? • 







■-‘- »■' -f 

1 '( ‘ ■;• 

f i»’ "'■ ■''’*^^ i ■'■ ‘S iV 

i 




'. »v'<v*4 7^ 

4 j''.,-’ •■ ■» 

■ ■" ’■ ' 

« V \ 

■ - ■'- 


J.,*. -’lii' 



L-l li . . , - ■ - 

k- 

■IL *_ _ 


At'C 

.:m 

^Vv 





V • ^o 


Vs... . >S'^ 



rp.^ 
vi *T 

3 ;»,. "'•'■’. y- ' 




?^L':v 1* .r^ 


■i-v i •' -• ■ 




f ^ 



\ 







i>*r=*>i! 


'ftv-r 


MU. 





CECIL AND THE WAR-CHIEF, 169 


CHAPTER III. 

CECIL AND THE WAR-CHIEF. 

Children of the sun, with whom revenge is virtue. 

Young. 

/^N the next day came the races, the great diver- 
sion of the Indians. Each tribe ran only one 
horse, — the best it had. There were thirty tribes or 
bands, each with its choicest racer on the track. The 
Puget Sound and lower Columbia Indians, being des- 
titute of horses, were not represented. There had 
been races every day on a small scale, but they were 
only private trials of speed, while to-day was the great 
day of racing for all the tribes, the day when the head 
chiefs ran their horses. 

The competition was close, but Snoqualmie the 
Cayuse won the day. He rode the fine black horse 
he had taken from the Bannock he had tortured to 
death. Multnomah and the chiefs were present, and 
the victory was won under the eyes of all the tribes. 
The haughty, insolent Cayuse felt that he had gained 
a splendid success. Only, as in the elation of victory 
his glance swept over the crowd, he met the sad, un- 
applauding gaze of Cecil, and it made his ever burn- 
ing resentment grow hotter still. 

I hate that man,” he thought. ** I tried to thrust 
him down into slavery, and Multnomah made him a 
chief. My heart tells me that he is an enemy. I 
hate him. I will kill him.” 


170 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

“ Poor Wallulah ! ” Cecil was thinking. What a 
terrible future is before her as the wife of that inhuman 
torturer of men ! ” 

And his sympathies went out to the lonely girl, the 
golden thread of whose life was to be interwoven with 
the bloodstained warp and woof of Snoqualmie’s. 
But he tried hard not to think of her ; he strove res- 
olutely that day to absorb himself in his work, and 
the effort was not unsuccessful. 

After the races were over, a solemn council was 
held in the grove and some important questions dis- 
cussed and decided. Cecil took part, endeavoring in 
a quiet way to set before the chiefs a higher ideal of 
justice and mercy than their own. He was heard with 
grave attention, and saw that more than one chief 
seemed impressed by his words. Only Snoqualmie 
was sullen and inattentive, and Mishlah the Cougar 
was watchful and suspicious. 

After the council was over Cecil went to his lodge. 
On the way he found the young Willamette runner 
sitting on a log by the path, looking even more woe- 
begone than he had the day before. Cecil stopped to 
inquire how he was. 

Culius [bad],” was grunted in response. 

“ Did you see the races ? ” 

Races bad. What do I care?” 

“ I hope you will be better soon.” 

*^Yes, better or worse by and by. What do I 
care ? ” 

Can I do anything for you ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“What is it? ” 

“ Go.” 


CECIL AND THE WAR-CHIEF. 171 

And he dropped his hand upon his knees, doubled 
himself together, and refused to say another word. 
As Cecil turned to go he found Multnomah standing 
close by, watching him. 

Come,” said the stern despot, briefly. I want 
to talk with you.” 

He led the way back through the noisy encamp- 
ment to the now deserted grove of council. Every- 
thing there was quiet and solitary ; the thick circle of 
trees hid them from the camp, though its various 
sounds floated faintly to them. They were quite 
alone. Multnomah seated himself on the stone cov- 
ered with furs, that was his place in the council. 
Cecil remained standing before him, wondering what 
was on his mind. Was the war-chief aware of his 
interview with Wallulah ? If so, what then ? Mult- 
nomah fixed on him the gaze which few men met 
without shrinking. i 

*^Tell me,” he said, while it seemed to Cecil as if 
that eagle glance read every secret of his innermost 
heart, ** tell me where your land is, and why you left 
it, and the reason for your coming among us. Keep 
no thought covered, for Multnomah will see it if you 
do.” 

Cecil’s eye kindled, his cheek flushed. Wallulah was 
forgotten ; his mission, and his mission only, was re- 
membered. He stood before one who held over the 
many tribes of the Wauna the authority of a prince ; 
if he could but be won for Christ, what vast results 
might follow ! 

He told it all, — the story of his home and his work, 
his call of God to go to the Indians, his long wander- 
ings, the message he had to deliver, how it had been 


172 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS, 


received by some and rejected by many ; now he was 
here, a messenger sent by the Great Spirit to tell the 
tribes of the Wanna the true way of life. He told it 
all, and never had he been so eloquent. It was a 
striking contrast, the grim Indian sitting there leaning 
on his bow, his sharp, treacherous gaze bent like a 
bird of prey on the delicately moulded man pleading 
before him. 

He listened till Cecil began to talk of love and 
forgiveness as duties enjoined by the Great Spirit. 
Then he spoke abruptly. 

When you stood up in the council the day the bad 
chief was tried, and told of the weakness and the wars 
that would come if the confederacy was broken up, 
you talked wisely and like a great chief and warrior ; 
now you talk like a woman. Love ! forgiveness ! ” 
He repeated the words, looking at Cecil with a kind 
of wondering scorn, as if he could not comprehend 
such weakness in one who looked like a brave man. 

War and hate are the life of the Indian. They are 
the strength of his heart. Take them away, and you 
drain the blood from his veins ; you break his spirit ; 
he becomes a squaw.’* 

But my people love and forgive, yet they are not 
squaws. They are brave and hardy in battle ; their 
towns are great ; their country is like a garden.” 

And he told Multnomah of the laws, the towns, the 
schools, the settled habits and industry of New Eng- 
land. The chief listened with growing impatience. 
At length he threw his arm up with an indescribable 
gesture of freedom, like a man rejecting a fetter. 

** How can they breathe, shut in, bound down like 
that? How can they live, so tied and burdened? ” 


CECIL AND THE WAR-CHIEF. 


^73 


not that better than tribe forever warring 
against tribe ? Is it not better to live like men than 
to lurk in dens and feed on roots like beasts ? Yet 
we will fight, too ; the white man does not love war, 
but he will go to battle when his cause is just and war 
must be.” 

“ So will the deer and the cayote fight when they 
can flee no longer. The Indian loves battle. He 
loves to seek out his enemy, to grapple with him, and 
to tread him down. That is a man’s life ! ” 

There was a wild grandeur in the chiefs tone. All 
the tameless spirit of his race seemed to speak through 
him, the spirit that has met defeat and extermination 
rather than bow its neck to the yoke of civilization. 
Cecil realized that on the iron fibre of the war-chiefs 
nature his pleading made no impression whatever, and 
his heart sank within him. 

Again he tried to speak of the ways of peace, but 
the chief checked him impatiently. 

That is talk for squaws and old men. Multnomah 
does not understand it. Talk like a man, if you wish 
him to listen. Multnomah does not forgive; Mult- 
nomah wants no peace with his enemies. If they are 
weak he tramples on them and makes them slaves ; if 
they are strong he fights them. When the Shoshones 
take from Multnomah, he takes from them ; if they 
give him war he gives them war ; if they torture one 
Willamette at the stake, Multnomah stretches two Sho- 
shones upon red-hot stones. Multnomah gives hate 
for hate and war for war. This is the law the Great 
Spirit has given the Indian. What law he has given 
the white man, Multnomah knows not nor cares ! ” 
Baffled in his attempt, Cecil resorted to another 


174 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


line of persuasion. He set before Multnomah the 
arts, the intelligence, the splendor of the white race. 

The Indian has his laws and customs, and that is 
well ; but why not council with the white people, even 
as chiefs council together? Send an embassy to 
ask that wise white men be sent you, so that you 
may learn of their arts and laws; and what seems 
wise and good you can accept, what seems not so 
can be set aside. I know the ways that lead back to 
the land of the white man ; I myself would lead the 
embassy.’* 

It was a noble conception, — that of making a treaty 
between this magnificent Indian confederacy and New 
England for the purpose of introducing civilization and 
religion ; and for a moment he lost sight of the insur- 
mountable obstacles in the way. 

‘‘ No,” replied the chief, neither alone nor as 
leader of a peace party will your feet ever tread again 
the path that leads back to the land of the white man. 
We want not upon our shoulders the burden of his 
arts and laws. We want not his teachers to tell us 
how to be women. If the white man wants us, let 
him find his way over the desert and through the 
mountains, and we will grapple with him and see 
which is the strongest.” 

So saying, the war-chief rose and left him. 

He says that I shall never be allowed to go back,” 
thought Cecil, with a bitter consciousness of defeat. 
*‘Then my mission ends here in the land of the 
Bridge, even as I have so often dreamed that it would. 
So be it ; I shall work the harder now that I see the 
end approaching. I shall gather the chiefs in my 
own lodge this evening and preach to them.” 


CECIL AND THE WAR-CHIEF. 


175 


While he was forming his resolution, there came 
the recollection that Wallulah would look for him, 
would be expecting him to come to her. 

“ I cannot,” he thought, though he yearned to go 
to her. ‘‘I cannot go; I must be faithful to my 
mission.” 

Many chiefs came that night to his lodge ; among 
them, to his surprise, Tohomish the seer. Long and 
animated was Cecil^s talk ; beautiful and full of spir- 
itual fervor were the words in which he pointed them 
to a better life. Tohomish was impassive, listening 
in his usual brooding way. The others seemed inter- 
ested ; but when he was done they all rose up and 
went away without a word, — all except the Shoshone 
renegade who had helped him bury the dead Ban- 
nock. He came to Cecil before leaving the lodge. 

'‘Sometime,” he said, "when it will be easier for 
me to be good than it is now, I will try to live the 
life you talked about to-night.” 

Then he turned and went out before Cecil could 
reply. 

"There is one at least seeking to get nearer God,” 
thought Cecil, joyfully. After awhile his enthusiasm 
faded away, and he remembered how anxiously Wal- 
lulah must have waited for him, and how bitterly she 
must have been disappointed. Her face, pale and 
stained with tears, rose plainly before him. A deep 
remorse filled his heart. 

" Poor child ! I am the first white person she has 
seen since her mother died ; no wonder she longs for 
my presence ! I must go to her to-morrow. After 
all, there is no danger of my caring for her. To me 
my work is all in all.” 


176 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


CHAPTER IV. 


ARCHERY AND GAMBLING. 


To gambling they are no less passionately addicted in the interior 
than on the coast. — Bancroft: Native Races. 


HE next morning came the archery games. The 



best marksmen of each tribe contended together 
under the eyes of Multnomah, and Snoqualmie the 
Cayuse won the day. 

These diversions were beginning to produce the 
result that the politic chief had intended they should. 
Better feeling was springing up. The spirit of discon- 
tent that had been rife was disappearing. Every day 
good-fellowship grew more and more between the 
Willamettes and their allies. Every day Snoqualmie 
the Cayuse became more popular among the tribes, 
and already he was second in influence to none but 
Multnomah himself. 

The great war-chief had triumphed over every 
obstacle ; and he waited now only for the last day of 
the council, when his daughter should be given to 
Snoqualmie and the chiefs should recognize him as 
the future head of the confederacy. 

Knowing this, the sight of Snoqualmie’s successful 
archery was almost intolerable to Cecil, and he turned 
away from the place where the games were held. 

I will seek the young Willamette who is sick,” 


ARCHERY AND GAMBLING. 177 

he said to himself. Then this evening I will go and 
visit Wallulah.” 

The thought sent the blood coursing warmly through 
his veins, but he chided himself for it. It is but 
duty, I go to her only as a missionary,” he repeated 
to himself over and over again. 

He went to the lodge of the young Willamette and 
asked for him. 

“ He is not here,” the father of the youth told him. 
“ He is in the sweat-house. He is sick this morning, 
/lieu sick.” 

And the old man emphasized the hieu [much], 
with a prolonged intonation and a comprehensive 
gesture as if the young man were very sick indeed. 
To the sweat-house went Cecil forthwith. He found 
it to be a little arched hut, made by sticking the ends 
of bent willow-wands into the ground and covering 
them over with skins, leaving only a small opening 
for entrance. When a sick person wished to take one 
of those sweat baths ” so common among the Indians, 
stones were heated red hot and put within the hut, 
and water was poured on them. The invalid, stripped 
to the skin, entered, the opening was closed behind 
him, and he was left to steam in the vapors. 

When Cecil came up, the steam was pouring between 
the overlapping edges of the skins, and he could hear 
the young Willamette inside, chanting a low monoto- 
nous song, an endlessly repeated invocation to his 
totem to make him well. How he could sing or even 
breathe in that stifling atmosphere was a mystery to 
Cecil. 

By and by the Willamette raised the flap that hung 
over the entrance and crawled out, hot, steaming. 


12 


178 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

perspiring at every pore. He rushed with unsteady 
footsteps down to the river, only a few yards away, 
and plunged into the cold water. After repeatedly 
immersing himself, he waded back to the shore and 
lay down to dry in the sun. The shock to his nervous 
system of plunging from a hot steam-bath into ice- 
cold water fresh from the snow peaks of the north 
had roused all his latent vitality. He had recovered 
enough to be sullen and resentful to Cecil when he 
came up ; and after vainly trying to talk with or help 
him, the missionary left him. 

It is characteristic of the Indian, perhaps of most 
half-animal races, that their moral conduct depends 
on physical feeling. Like the animal, they are good- 
humored, even sportive, when all is well ; like the 
animal, they are sluggish and unreasoning in time of 
sickness. 

Cecil went back to the camp. He found that the 
archery games were over, and that a great day of 
gambling had begun. He was astonished at the 
eagerness with which all the Indians flung themselves 
into it. Multnomah alone took no part, and Toho- 
mish, visible only at the council, was not there. But 
with those two exceptions, chiefs, warriors, all flung 
themselves headlong into the game. 

First, some of the leading chiefs played at hand,” 
and each tribe backed its chief. Furs, skins, weapons, 
all manner of Indian wealth was heaped in piles be- 
hind the gamblers, constituting the stakes ; and they 
were divided among the tribes of the winners, — each 
player representing a tribe, and his winnings going, 
not to himself, but to his people. This rule applied, 
of course, only to the great public games ; in private 


Archery and gambling. 179 

games of ‘‘ hand” each successful player kept his own 
spoils. 

Amid the monotonous chant that always accom- 
panied gambling, the two polished bits of bone (the 
winning one marked, the other not) were passed 
secretly from hand to hand. The bets were made 
as to who held the marked stick and in which hand, 
then a show of hands was made and the game was 
lost and won. 

From hand ” they passed to ahikia, a game like 
that of dice, played with figured beaver teeth or 
disks of ivory, which were tossed up, everything 
depending on the combination of figures presented 
in their fall. It was played recklessly. The Indians 
were carried away by excitement. They bet any- 
thing and everything they had. Wealthy chiefs 
staked their all on the turn of the ivory disks, and 
some were beggared, some enriched. Cecil noticed 
in particular Mishlah the Cougar, chief of the Molal- 
lies. He was like a man intoxicated. His huge 
bestial face was all ablaze with excitement, his eyes 
were glowing like coals. He had scarcely enough 
intellect to understand the game, but enough com- 
bativeness to fling himself into it body and soul. He 
bet his horses and lost them ; he bet his slaves and 
lost again ; he bet his lodges, with their rude furnish- 
ings of mat and fur, and lost once more. Maddened, 
furious, like a lion in the toils, the desperate savage 
staked his wives and children on the throw of the 
ahikia^ and they were swept from him into perpetual 
slavery. 

Then he rose up and glared upon his opponents, 
with his tomahawk clinched in his hand, — as if feeling 


i8o THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

dimly that he had been wronged, thirsting for ven- 
geance, ready to strike, yet not knowing upon whom 
the blow should fall. There was death in his look, and 
the chiefs shrunk from him, when his eyes met Mult- 
nomah’s, who was looking on; and the war-chief 
checked and awed him with his cold glance, as a 
tamer of beasts might subdue a rebellious tiger. Then 
the Molallie turned and went away, raging, desper- 
ate, a chief still, but a chief without lodge or wife or 
slave. 

The sight was painful to Cecil, and he too went 
away while the game was at its height. Drawn by an 
influence that he could not resist, he took the trail 
that led down the bank of the river to the retreat of 
Wallulah. 


A DEAD QC/EEJV’S JEWELS. 


I8l 


CHAPTER V. 

A DEAD queen’s JEWELS. 

For round about the walls yclothed were 
With goodly arras of great maiesty, 

Woven with golde and silke so close and nere 
That the rich metall lurked privily. 

The Faerie Queene, 

TT E found the sentinels by the pathway half reluc- 
-*■ tant to let him pass, but they did not forbid 
him. Evidently it was only their awe of him as the 
** Great White Prophet,” to whom Multnomah had 
added the dignity of an Indian sachem, that over- 
came their scruples. It was with a sense of doing 
wrong that he went on. If Multnomah knew,” he 
thought, “what would he do?” And brave as Cecil 
was, he shuddered, thinking how deadly the wrath 
of the war-chief would be, if he knew of these secret 
visits to his daughter. 

“It is an abuse of hospitality; it is clandestine, 
wrong,” he thought bitterly. “ And yet she is lonely^ 
she needs me, and I must go to her ; but I will never 
go again.” 

Where he had met her before, he found her waiting 
for him now, a small, graceful figure, standing in the 
shadow of the wood. She heard his footsteps before 
he saw her, and the melancholy features were trans- 
figured with joy. She stood hesitating a moment like 


i 82 the Bridge of the gods. 

some shy creature of the forest, then sprang eagerly 
forward to meet him. 

I knew you were coming ! ” she cried rapturously. 
** I felt your approach long before I heard your foot- 
steps.” 

How is that? ” said Cecil, holding her hands and 
looking down into her radiant eyes. Something of the 
wild Indian mysticism flashed in them as she replied : 

“ I cannot tell ; I knew it ! my spirit heard your 
steps long before my ears could catch the sound. 
But oh ! ” she cried in sudden transition, her face 
darkening, her eyes growing large and pathetic, ** why 
did you not come yesterday? I so longed for you 
and you did not come. It seemed as if the day 
would never end. I thought that perhaps the Indians 
had killed you ; I thought it might be that I should 
never see you again ; and all the world grew dark as 
night, I felt so terribly alone. Promise me you will 
never stay away so long again ! ” 

** Never ! ” exclaimed Cecil, on the impulse of the 
moment. An instant later he would have given the 
world to have recalled the word. 

I am so glad ! ” she cried, clapping her hands in 
girlish delight ; and he could not pain her by an 
explanation. 

After a while I will tell her how impossible it is 
for me to come again,” he thought. I cannot tell 
her now.” And he seized upon every word and look 
of the lovely unconscious girl, with a hunger of heart 
born of eight years’ starvation. 

** Now you must come with me to my lodge ; you 
are my guest, and I shall entertain you. I want you 
to look at my treasures.” 


A DEAD QUEEN^S JEWELS. 183 

Cecil went with her, wondering if they would meet 
Multnomah at her lodge, and if so, what he would 
say. He felt that he was doing wrong, yet so sweet 
was it to be in her presence, so much did her beauty 
fill the mighty craving of his nature, that it was not 
possible for him to tear himself away. 

Some fifteen minutes’ walk brought them to Wallu- 
lah’s lodge. It was a large building, made of bark 
set upright against a frame-work of poles, and roofed 
with cedar boards, — in its external appearance like 
all Willamette lodges. Several Indian girls, neatly 
dressed and of more than ordinary intelligence, were 
busied in various employments about the yard. They 
looked in surprise at the white man and their mis- 
tress, but said nothing. The two entered the lodge. 
Cecil muttered an exclamation of amazement as he 
crossed the threshold. 

The interior was a glow of color, a bower of rich- 
ness. Silken tapestries draped and concealed the 
bark walls; the floor of trodden earth was covered 
with a superbly figured carpet. It was like the hall of 
some Asiatic palace. Cecil looked at Wallulah, and 
her eyes sparkled with merriment at his bewildered 
expression. ** I knew you would be astonished,” she 
cried. Is not this as fair as anything in your own 
land ? No, wait till I show you another room ! ” 

She led the way to an inner apartment, drew back 
the tapestry that hung over the doorway, and bade 
him enter. 

Never, not even at St. James or at Versailles, had 
he seen such magnificence. The rich many-hued 
products of Oriental looms covered the rough walls ; 
the carpet was like a cushion ; mirrors sparkling with 


1 84 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS, 

gems reflected his figure ; luxurious divans invited to 
repose. Everywhere his eye met graceful draperies 
and artistically blended colors. Silk and gold com- 
bined to make up a scene that was like a dream of 
fable. Cecil’s dazzled eyes wandered over all this 
splendor, then came back to Wallulah’s face again. 

I have seen nothing like this in my own land, not 
even in the King’s palace. How came such beautiful 
things here among the Indians ? 

They were saved from the vessel that was wrecked. 
They were my mother’s, and she had them arranged 
thus. This was her lodge. It is mine now. I have 
never entered any other. I have never been inside 
an Indian wigwam. My mother forbade it, for fear 
that I might grow like the savage occupants.’^ 

Cecil knew now how she had preserved her grace 
and refinement amid her fierce and squalid surround- 
ings. Again her face changed and the wistful look 
came back. Her wild delicate nature seemed to 
change every moment, to break out in a hundred 
varying impulses. 

I love beautiful things,” she said, drawing a fold 
of tapestry against her cheek. ‘‘They seem half 
human. I love to be among them and feel their 
influence. These were my mother’s, and it seems 
as if part of her life was in them. Sometimes, after 
she died, I used to shut my eyes and put my cheek 
against the soft hangings and try to think it was the 
touch of her hand ; or I would read from her favor- 
ite poets and try to think that I heard her repeating 
them to me again ! ” 

“ Read ! ” exclaimed Cecil ; “ then you have books ? ” 
“ Oh, yes, I will show you all my treasures.” 


A DEAD QUEEN'S JEWELS. 185 

She went into another apartment and returned 
with a velvet case and a richly enchased casket. 
She opened the case and took out several rolls of 
parchment. 

‘‘ Here they are, my dear old friends, that have 
told me so many beautiful things.” 

Cecil unrolled them with a scholar’s tenderness. 
Their touch thrilled him ] it was touching again some 
familiar hand parted from years ago. The parch- 
ments were covered with strange characters, in a lan- 
guage entirely unknown to him. The initial letters 
were splendidly illuminated, the margins ornamented 
with elaborate designs. Cecil gazed on the scrolls, 
as one who loves music but who is ignorant of its 
technicalities might look at a sonata of Beethoven or 
an opera of Wagner, and be moved by its suggested 
melodies. 

“ I cannot read it,” he said a little sadly. 

“ Sometime I will teach you,” she replied ; “ and 
you shall teach me your own language, and we will 
talk in it instead of this wretched Indian tongue.” 

‘^Tell me something about it now,” asked Cecil, 
still gazing at the unknown lines. 

‘‘ Not now, there is so much else to talk about j 
but I will to-morrow.” 

To-morrow ! The word pierced him like a knife. 
For him, a missionary among barbarians, for her, the 
betrothed of a savage chief, the morrow could bring 
only parting and woe ; the sweet, fleeting present 
was all they could hope for. For them there could 
be no to-morrow. Wallulah, however, did not observe 
his dejection. She had opened the casket, and 
now placed it between them as they sat together on 


i86 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


the divan. One by one, she took out the contents 
and displayed them. A magnificent necklace of dia- 
monds, another of pearls; rings, brooches, jewelled 
bracelets, flashed their splendor on him. Totally 
ignorant of their great value, she showed them only 
with a true woman’s love of beautiful things, showed 
them as artlessly as if they were but pretty shells or 
flowers. 

‘‘Are they not bright?” she would say, holding 
them up to catch the light. “ How they sparkle ! ” 

One she took up a little reluctantly. It was an 
opal, a very fine one. She held it out, turning it in 
the light, so that he might see the splendid jewel 
glow and pale. 

“Is it not lovely?” she said; “like sun- tints on 
the snow. But my mother said that in her land it is 
called the stone of misfortune. It is beautiful, but it 
brings trouble with it.” 

He saw her fingers tremble nervously as they held 
it, and she dropped it from them hurriedly into the 
casket, as if it were some bright poisonous thing she 
dreaded to touch. 

After a while, when Cecil had sufficiently admired 
the stones, she put them back into the casket and 
took it and the parchments away. She came back 
with her flute, and seating herself, looked at him 
closely. 

“ You are sad ; there are heavy thoughts on your 
mind. How is that? He who brings me sunshine 
must not carry a shadow on his own brow. Why are 
you troubled?” 

The trouble was that he realized now, and was 
compelled to acknowledge to himself, that he loved 


A DEAD QUEEN'S JEWELS. 1S7 

this gentle, clinging girl, with a passionate love ; that 
he yearned to take her in his arms and shelter her 
from the terrible savagery before her ; and that he 
felt it could not, must not be. 

It is but little,” he replied. “ Every heart has 
its burden, and perhaps I have mine. It is the lot 
of man.” 

She looked at him with a vague uneasiness; her 
susceptible nature responded dimly to the tumultuous 
emotions that he was trying by force of will to shut 
up in his own heart. 

“ Trouble ? Oh, do I not know how bitter it is ! 
Tell me, what do your people do when they have 
trouble ? Do they cut oif their hair and blacken their 
faces, as the Indians do, when they lose one they love ? ” 
No, they would scorn to do anything so degrad- 
ing. He is counted bravest who makes the least 
display of grief and yet always cherishes a tender 
remembrance of the dead.” 

“ So would I. My mother forbade me to cut off 
my hair or blacken my face when she died, and so I 
did not, though some of the Indians thought me 
bad for not doing so. And your people are not 
afraid to talk of the dead?” 

‘‘Most certainly not. Why should we be? We 
Know that they are in a better world, and their mem- 
ories are dear to us. It is very sweet sometimes to 
talk of them.” 

“ But the Willamettes never talk of their dead, for 
fear they may hear their names spoken and come 
back. Why should they dread their coming back ? 
Ah, if my mother only would come back ! How I 
used to long and pray for it ! ” 


i88 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


Cecil began to talk to her about the love and 
goodness of God. If he could only see her sheltered 
in the Divine compassion, he could trust her to slip 
from him into the unknown darkness of her future. 
She listened earnestly. 

‘‘Your words are good,” she said in her quaint 
phraseology; “and if trouble comes to me again I 
shall remember them. But I am very happy now.” 

The warmth and thankfulness of her glance sent 
through him a great thrill of blended joy and pain. 

“ You forget,” he said, forcing himself to be calm, 
“ that you are soon to leave your home and become 
the wife of Snoqualmie.” 

Wallulah raised her hand as if to ward off a blow, 
her features quivering with pain. She tried to reply, 
but for an instant the words faltered on her lips. 
He saw it, and a fierce delight leaped up in his heart. 
“ She does not love him, it is I whom she cares for,” 
he thought ; and then he thrust the thought down in 
indignant self-reproach. 

“ I do not care for Snoqualmie ; I once thought I 
did, but — ” 

She hesitated, the quick color flushed her face ; for 
the first time she seemed in part, though not alto- 
gether, aware of why she had changed. 

For an instant Cecil felt as if he must speak ; but 
the consequences rose before him while the words 
were almost on his lips. If he spoke and won her 
love, Multnomah would force her into a marriage with 
Snoqualmie just the same; and if the iron despot 
were to consent and give her to Cecil, the result would 
be a bloody war with Snoqualmie. 

“ I cannot, I must not,” thought Cecil. He rose 


A DEAD QUEEN'S JEWELS. 189 

to his feet ; his one impulse was to get away, to fight 
out the battle with himself. Wallulah grew pale. 

You are going?” she said, rising also. “Some- 
thing in your face tells me you are not coming back,” 
and she looked at him with strained, sad, wistful 
eyes. 

He stood hesitating, tom by conflicting emotions, 
not knowing what to do. 

“ If you do not come back, I shall die,” she said 
simply. 

As they stood thus, her flute slipped from her re- 
laxed fingers and fell upon the floor. He picked it 
up and gave it to her, partly through the born instinct 
of the gentleman, which no familiarity with barbarism 
can entirely crush out, partly through the tendency in 
time of intense mental strain to relieve the mind by 
doing any little thing. 

She took it, lifted it to her lips, and, still looking at 
him, began to play. The melody, strange, untaught, 
artless as the song of a wood- bird, was infinitely sor- 
rowful and full of longing. Her very life seemed to 
breathe through the music in fathomless yearning. 
Cecil understood the plea, and the tears rushed un- 
bidden into his eyes. All his heart went out to her in 
pitying tenderness and love ; and yet he dared not 
trust himself to speak. 

“ Promise to come back,” said the music, while her 
dark eyes met his ; “ promise to come back. You are 
my one friend, my light, my all ; do not leave me to 
perish in the dark. I shall die without you, I shall 
die, I shall die 1 ” 

Could any man resist the appeal ? Could Cecil, of 
all men, thrilling through all his sensitive and ardent 


190 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

nature to the music, thrilling still more to a mighty 
and resistless love? 

“ I will come back,” he said, and parted from her ; 
he dared not trust himself to say another word. But 
the parting was not so abrupt as to prevent his seeing 
the swift breaking- forth of light upon the melancholy 
face that was becoming so beautiful to him and so 
dear. 


THE TWILIGHT TALE. 


191 


CHAPTER VI. 

THE TWILIGHT TALE. 

That eve I spoke those words again, 

And then she hearkened what I said. 

Dante Rossetti. 

I ^HE next day the Indians had a great hunt. A 
circle of men on foot and on horseback was 
drawn around a large tract of forest on the western 
side of the Willamette River. Gradually, with much 
shouting, hallooing, and beating of bushes, the circle 
closed upon the game within it, like the folds of a 
mighty serpent. 

There was a prodigious slaughter, a mad scene of 
butchery, in which the Indians exulted like fiends. 
Late in the afternoon they returned to camp, stained 
with blood and loaded with the spoils of the chase. 
Snoqualmie distinguished himself by killing a large 
bear, and its claws, newly severed and bleeding, 
were added to his already ample necklace of similar 
trophies. 

Cecil remained in the almost deserted camp. He 
tried in vain to talk with the few chiefs who had not 
gone out to join in the hunt. Missionary work was 
utterly impossible that day. Wallulah and the prob- 
lem of his love filled his thoughts. His mind, aroused 
and burning, searched and analyzed the question 
upon every side. 


192 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

Should he tell Multnomah of Snoqualmie’s cruelty, 
representing his unfitness to be the husband of the 
gentle Wallulah? 

To the stern war-chief that very cruelty would be 
an argument in Snoqualmie’s favor. Should he him- 
>^self become a suitor for her hand? He knew full 
well that Multnomah would reject him with disdain ; 
or, were he to consent, it would involve the Willa- 
mettes in a war with the haughty and vindictive Cayuse. 
Finally, should he attempt to fly with her to some 
other land ? Impossible. All the tribes of the north- 
west were held in the iron grip of Multnomah. They 
could never escape j and even if they could, the good 
he had done among the Indians, the good he hoped 
would grow from generation to generation, would be 
all destroyed if it were told among them that he who 
claimed to come to them with a message from God 
had ended by stealing the chiefs daughter. And had 
he a right to love any one ? — had he a right to love 
at all ? God had sent him to do a work among the 
Indians; was it not wicked for him to so much as 
look either to the right or to the left till that work 
was done ? 

Amid this maze of perplexities, his tense, agonized 
soul sought in vain for some solution, some conclusion. 
At times he sat in his lodge and brooded over these 
things till he seemed wrought up almost to madness, 
till his form trembled with excitement, and the old 
pain at his heart grew sharp and deadly. 

Then again, trying to shake it off, he went out 
among the few Indians who were left in the camp and 
attempted to do missionary work; but enthusiasm 
was lacking, the glow and tenderness was gone from 


THE TWILIGHT TALE. 


193 


his words, the grand devotion that had inspired him 
so long failed him at last. He was no longer a saintly 
apostle to the Indians ; he was only a human lover, 
torn by stormy human doubts and fears. 

Even the Indians felt that some intangible change 
had come over him, and as they listened their hearts 
no longer responded to his eloquence ; they felt some- 
how that the life was gone from his words. He saw 
it too, and it gave him a keen pang. 

He realized that the energy and concentration of 
his character was gone, that a girl’s beauty had drawn 
him aside from the mission on which God had 
sent him. 

** I will go and see her. I will, without letting her 
know that I love her, give her to understand my 
position and her own. She shall see how impossible 
it is for us ever to be aught to each other. And I 
shall urge her to cling to God and walk in the path 
he has appointed for her, while I go on in mine.” 

So thinking, he left his lodge that evening and 
took the path to Wallulah’s home. 

Some distance from the encampment he met an 
Indian funeral procession. The young Willamette 
runner had died that morning, and now they were 
bearing him to the river, down which a canoe was to 
waft the body and the mourners to the nearest mim- 
aluse island. The corpse was swathed in skins and 
tied around with thongs ; the father bore it on his 
shoulder, for the dead had been but a slender lad. 
Behind them came the mother and a few Indian 
women. As they passed, the father chanted a rude 
lament. 

Oh, Mox-mox, my son, why did you go away and 

13 


194 the bridge of THE GODS. 

leave our wigwam empty? You were not weak nor 
sickly, and your life was young. Why did you go? 
Oh, Mox-mox, dead, dead, dead ! ” 

Then the women took up the doleful refrain, — 

Oh, Mox-mox, dead, dead, dead ! 

Then the old man again, — 

Oh, Mox-mox, the sun was warm and food was 
plenty, yet you went away ; and when we reach out 
for you, you are not there. Oh Mox-mox, dead, 
dead, dead ! ” 

Then the women again, — 

Oh, Mox-mox, dead, dead, dead ! 

And so it went on, till they were embarked and the 
canoe bore them from sight and hearing. Down on 
some mimaluse island or rocky point, they would 
stretch the corpse out in a canoe, with the bow and 
arrows and fishing spear used in life beside it ; then 
turn over it another canoe like a cover, and so leave 
the dead to his long sleep. 

The sight gave an added bitterness to Cecil’s 
meditations. 

After all,” he thought, life is so short, — a shadow 
fleeting onward to the night, — and love is so sweet ! 
Why not open my heart to the bliss it brings ? The 
black ending comes so soon ! Why not fling all 
thought of consequences to the winds, and gather into 
my arms the love that is offered me ? why not know 
its warmth and thrill for one golden moment, even 
though that moment ends in death?” 

The blood rushed wildly through his veins, but he 
resolutely put down the temptation. No, he would 
be faithful, he would not allow himself even to think 
of such a thing. 


THE TWILIGHT TALE, 


195 


Reluctantly, as before, the sentinels made way for 
him, and he went on through the wood to the trysting- 
place, for such it had come to be. She was wait- 
ing. But there was no longer the glad illumination 
of face, the glad springing forward to meet him. She 
advanced shyly, a delicate color in her cheek, a trem- 
ulous grace in her manner, that he had not observed 
before ; the consciousness of love had come to her 
and made her a woman. Never had she seemed so 
fair to Cecil ; yet his resolution did not falter. 

I have come, you see, — come to tell you that I 
can come no more, and to talk with you about your 
future.” 

Her face grew very pale. 

^‘Are you going away?” she asked sorrowfully, 
“and shall I never see you again?” 

“I cannot come back,” he replied gently. The 
sight of her suffering cut him to the heart. 

“ It has been much to see you,” he continued, 
while she stood before him, looking downward, with- 
out reply. “ It has been like meeting one of my own 
people. I shall never forget you.” 

She raised her head and strove to answer, but the 
words died on her lips. How he loathed himself, 
talking so smoothly to her while he hungered to take 
her in his arms and tell her how he loved her ! 

Again he spoke. 

“ I hope you will be happy with Snoqualmie, 
and — ” 

She lifted her eyes with a sudden light flashing in 
their black depths. 

“ Do you want me to hate him? Never speak his 
name to me again ! ” 


196 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

** He is to be your husband ; nay, it is the wish of 
your father, and the great sachems approve it.” 

''Can the sachems put love in my heart,? Can 
the sachems make my heart receive him as its lord ? 
Ah, this bitter custom of the father giving his daughter 
to whomsoever he will, as if she were a dog ! And 
your lips sanction it ! ” 

Her eyes were full of tears. Scarcely realizing 
what he did, he tried to take her hand. The slender 
fingers shrank from his and were drawn away. 

" I do not sanction it, it is a bitter custom ; but it 
is to be, and I only wished to smooth your pathway. 
I want to say or do something that will help you 
when I am gone.” 

" Do you know what it would be for me to be an 
Indian’s wife? To cut the wood, and carry the 
water, and prepare the food, — that would be sweet 
to do for one I loved. But to toil amid dirt and 
filth for a savage whom I could only abhor, to feel 
myself growing coarse and squalid with my surround- 
ings, — I could not live ! ” 

She shuddered as she spoke, as if the very thought 
was horrible. 

"You hate this degraded Indian life as much as 
I do, and yet it is the life you would push me into,” 
she continued, in a tone of mournful heart-broken 
reproach. It stung him keenly. 

"It is not the life I would push you into. God 
knows I would give my life to take one thorn from 
yours.” The mad longing within him rushed into 
his voice in spite of himself, making it thrill with a 
passionate tenderness that brought the color back 
into her pallid cheek. " But I cannot remain,” he 


THE TWILIGHT TALE. 197 

went on, I dare not ; all that I can do is to say 
something that may help you in the future.” 

She looked at him with dilated eyes full of pain and 
bewilderment. 

‘‘I have no future if you go away. Why must 
you go? What will be left me after you are gone? 
Think how long I was here alone after my mother 
died, with no one to understand me, no one to 
talk to. Then you came, and I was happy. It was 
like light shining in the darkness; now it goes out 
and I can never hope again. Why must you go away 
and leave Wallulah in the dark? ” 

There was a childlike plaintiveness and simplicity 
in her tone ; and she came close to him, looking up 
in his face with wistful, pleading eyes, the beautiful 
face wan and drawn with bewilderment and pain, yet 
never so beautiful as now. 

Cecil felt the unspeakable cruelty of his attitude 
toward her, and his face grew white as death in an 
awful struggle between love and duty. But he felt 
that he must leave her or be disloyal to his God. 

“ I do not wish to go away. But God has called 
me to a great work, and I must do it. I dare not 
turn aside. You cannot know how dear your pres- 
ence is to me, or how bitter it is for me to part from 
you. But our parting must be, else the work I have 
done among the tribes will be scattered to the winds 
and the curse of God will be on me as a false and 
fallen prophet.” 

He spoke with a kind of fierceness, striving blindly 
to battle down the mad longing within, and his tones 
had a harshness that he was too agitated to notice. 
She drew back involuntarily. There came into her 


19 ^ THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

face a dignity he had never seen before. She was 
but a recluse and a girl, but she was of royal lineage 
by right of both her parents, and his words had roused 
a spirit worthy the daughter of Multnomah. 

I a weight on you? Are you afraid I will 
bring a curse upon you? Do not fear, I shall no 
longer ask you to stay. Wallulah shall take herself 
out of your life.” 

She gave him a look full of despair, as if seeing all 
hope go from her forever; then she said simply, 
Farewell,” and turned away. 

But in spite of her dignity there was an anguish 
written on her sweet pale face that he could not 
resist. All his strength of resolve, all his conviction 
of duty, crumbled into dust as she turned away ; and 
he was conscious only that he loved her, that he 
could not let her go. 

How it happened he never knew, but she was 
clasped in his arms, his kisses were falling on brow 
and cheek in a passionate outburst that could be 
kept back no longer. At first, she trembled in his 
arms and shrank away from him ; then she nestled 
close, as if sheltering herself in the love that was 
hers at last. After awhile she lifted a face over 
which a shadow of pain yet lingered. 

^‘But you said I would bring you a curse; you 
feared — ” 

He stopped her with a caress. 

Even curses would be sweet if they came through 
you. Forget what I said, remember only that I love 
you ! ” 

And she was content. 

Around them the twilight darkened into night ; the 


THE TWILIGHT TALE. 


199 


hours came and went unheeded by these two, wrapped 
in that golden love- dream which for a moment brings 
Eden back again to this gray old earth, all desolate as 
it is with centuries of woe and tears. 

But while they talked there was on him a vague 
dread, an indefinable misgiving, a feeling that he was 
disloyal to his mission, disloyal to her ; that their love 
could have but one ending, and that a dark one. 

Still he strove hard to forget everything, to shut out 
all the world, — drinking to the full the bliss of the 
present, blinding his eyes to the pain of the future. 

But after they parted, when her presence was with- 
drawn and he was alone, he felt like a man faithless 
and dishonored ; like a prophet who had bartered the 
salvation of the people to whom he had been sent, in 
exchange for a woman’s kisses, which could bring him 
only disgrace and death. 

As he went back to the camp in the stillness of 
midnight, he was startled by a distant roar, and saw 
through the tree-tops flames bursting from the far-off 
crater of Mount Hood. The volcano was beginning 
one of its periodical outbursts. But to Cecil’s mind, 
imbued with the gloomy supematuralism of early New 
England, and unconsciously to himself, tinged in later 
years with the superstition of the Indians among whom 
he had lived so long, that ominous roar, those flames 
leaping up into the black skies of night, seemed a 
sign of the wrath of God. 


200 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


CHAPTER VII, 


ORATOR AGAINST ORATOR. 


The gravity, fixed attention, and decorum of these sons of the forest 
was calculated to make for them a most favorable impression. — 
Gray : History of Oregon. 


HE next day all the Indians were gathered around 



the council grove. Multnomah presided, and 
every sachem was in his place. 

There was to be a trial of eloquence, — a tourney 
of orators, to see which tribe had the best. Only one, 
the most eloquent of each tribe, was to speak ; and 
Multnomah was to decide who was victor. The 
mother of Wallulah had introduced the custom, and 
it had become popular among the Indians. 

Cecil was in his place among the chiefs, with worn 
face and abstracted air ; Snoqualmie was present, with 
hawk-like glance and imperious mien ; there was Mish- 
lah, with his sullen and brutal features; there, too, 
wrapped closely in his robe of fur, sat Tohomish, 
brooding, gloomy, — the wild empire’s mightiest mas- 
ter of eloquence, and yet the most repulsive figure 
of them all. 

The Indians were strangely quiet that morning; 
the hush of a superstitious awe was upon them. The 
smoking mountains, Hood and Adams as the white 
man calls them, Au-poo-tah and Au-ka-ken in the 
Indian tongue, were becoming active of late. The 


ORATOR AGAINST ORATOR. 


701 


previous night flame had been seen bursting from the 
top of Mount Hood and thick black smoke still puffed 
upward from it, and on Mount Adams rested a heavy 
cloud of volcanic vapors. Were the mountains angry ? 
Aged men told how in the old time there had been a 
terrible outburst of flame and ashes from Mount Hood ; 
a rain of fire and stones had fallen over all the Wil- 
lamette valley ; the very earth had trembled at the 
great mountain’s wrath. 

As the lower animals feel in the air the signs of a 
coming storm, so these savages felt, by some kindred 
intuition, that a mysterious convulsion of Nature was 
at hand. They talked in low tones, they were sub- 
dued in manner ; any one coming suddenly upon them 
would have been impressed by the air of uneasiness 
and apprehension that everywhere prevailed. But the 
chiefs were stoical, and Multnomah impassive as ever. 

Could it have been that the stormy influences at 
work in Nature lent energy to the orators that day? 
They were unusually animated, at least for Indians, 
though a white man would have found them intoler- 
ably bombastic. Each speech was a boastful eulogy 
of the speaker’s tribe, and an exaggerated account 
of the wonderful exploits of its warriors. 

This was rather dangerous ground; for all the 
tribes had been at enmity in days gone by, and some 
of their most renowned victories had been won over 
each other. Every one took it in good part, however, 
except Mishlah. When We-math, chief of the Kla- 
maths, recounting the exploits of his race, told how 
in ancient times they had lorded it over the Mollalies, 
Mishlah glared at him as if tempted to leap upon him 
and strike him down. Fortunately the orator passed 


202 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


on to other things, and the wrath of the Mollalie chief 
gradually cooled. 

Then came Cecil. It was a grand opening. He 
could speak of his own people, of their ancient sav- 
agery and present splendor, and show how the gos- 
pel of love and justice had been the cause of their 
elevation. Then would come the appeal to the In- 
dians to accept this faith as their own and share in 
its uplifting power. It was a magnificent opportunity, 
the opportunity of a life-time. 

But the mental conflict he had just passed through 
had rent his mind like a volcanic upheaval. It pos- 
sessed no longer the intense concentration which had 
been the source of its strength. Tenderness, benevo- 
lence, missionary zeal, were still there, but no longer 
sovereign. Other passions divided his heart ; a hope- 
less and burning love consumed his being. 

He spoke, but the fire was gone from his delivery 
and the vividness from his imagination. His elo- 
quence was not what it had been ; his heart was no 
longer in his work, and his oration was a failure. 

Even the Indians noticed that something was lack- 
ing in his oratory, and it no longer moved them as it 
had done. Cecil realized it, and strove to speak with 
more energy, but in vain ; he could not arouse him- 
self ; and it was with a consciousness of failure that he 
brought his speech to a close and resumed his seat. 

To a man of his morbid conscientiousness only one 
conclusion was possible. 

God sent me to proclaim salvation to these chil- 
dren of darkness,” he thought, ^‘and I have turned 
aside to fill my heart with a woman’s love. His wrath 
is on me. He has taken his spirit from me. I am 


ORATOR AGAINST ORATOR. 203 

a thing rejected and accursed, and this people will go 
down to death because I have failed in my mission.” 

While he sat absorbed in these bitter, self-accus- 
ing thoughts, the speaking went on. Wau-ca-cus the 
Klickitat made a strong talk,” picturesque in Indian 
metaphor, full of energy. But the chief that followed 
surpassed him. Orator caught fire from orator; 
thoughts not unworthy a civilized audience were 
struck out by the intensity of the emulation ; speak- 
ers rose to heights which they had never reached be- 
fore, which they were destined never to reach again. 
In listening to and admiring their champions, the 
tribes forgot the smoking mountains and the feeling 
of apprehension that had oppressed them. At length 
Snoqualmie made a speech breathing his own daring 
spirit in every word. It went immeasurably beyond 
the others ; it was the climax of all the darkly splendid 
eloquence of the day. 

No, not of all. From his place among the chiefs 
rose a small and emaciated figure ; the blanket that 
had muffled his face was thrown aside, and the tribes 
looked on the mis-shapen and degraded features of 
Tohomish the Pine Voice. He stood silent at first, 
his eyes bent on the ground, like a man in a trance. 
For a moment the spectators forgot the wonderful 
eloquence of the man in his ignoble appearance. 
What could he do against Wau-ca-cus the Klickitat 
and Snoqualmie the Cayuse, whose sonorous utter- 
ances still rang in their ears, whose majestic presence 
still filled their minds ! 

« The Willamettes are beaten at last, — the Willa- 
mette speakers can no more be called the best,” was 
the one exultant thought of the allies, and the Willa- 


204 the bridge of the gods. 

mettes trembled for the fame of their orators. Back 
in the shadow of the cottonwoods, an old Willamette 
warrior put an arrow, on the string and bent his bow 
unseen on Tohomish. 

“ He cannot beat them, and it shall never be said 
that Tohomish failed,” he muttered. At that moment, 
even as death hung over him, the orator’s voice was 
heard beginning his talk ; ” and the warrior’s hand 
fell, the bent bow was relaxed, the arrow dropped 
from the string. For with the first accents of that soft 
and lingering voice the tribes were thrilled as with the 
beginning of music. 

The orator’s head was still bent down, his manner 
abstracted ; he spoke of the legends and the glories of 
the Willamette tribe, but spoke of them as if that tribe 
belonged to the past, as if it had perished from the 
earth, and he was telling the tale of a great dead race. 
His tones were melodious but indescribably mournful. 
When at length he lifted his face, his eyes shone with 
a misty light, and his brutal features were illuminated 
with a weird enthusiasm. A shudder went through 
the vast and motley assembly. No boastful rant was 
this, but a majestic story of the past, the story of a 
nation gone forever. It was the death-song of the 
Willamettes, solemnly rendered by the last and greatest 
orator of the race. 

At length he spoke of Multnomah and of the power 
of the confederacy in his time, but spoke of it as of old 
time, seen dimly through the lapse of years. Then, 
when as it seemed he was about to go on and tell how 
this power came to fall, he hesitated ; the words fal- 
tered on his lips; he suddenly broke off, took his 
seat, and drew his robe again over his face. 



/ T zvas the Death-song 
of the Willamettesy 








r ' . 

• Ir 1 ^ * "■ 

■M 



^ j -‘4^ 







ORATOR AGAINST ORATOR. 205 

The effect was indescribable. The portentous na- 
ture of the whole speech needed only that last touch 
of mystery. It sent through every heart a wild and 
awesome thrill, as at the shadow of approaching 
destiny. 

The multitude were silent; the spell of the pro- 
phet’s lofty and mournful eloquence still lingered over 
them. Multnomah rose. With him rested the decis- 
ion as to who was the greatest orator. But the proud 
old war-chief knew that all felt that Tohomish had far 
surpassed his competitors, and he was resolved that 
not his lips but the voice of the tribes should proclaim 
their choice. 

Multnomah was to decide who has spoken best, 
but he leaves the decision with you. You have heard 
them all. Declare who is the greatest, and your word 
shall be Multnomah’s word.” 

There was an instant’s silence ; then in a murmur 
like the rush of the sea came back the voice of the 
multitude. 

Tohomish ! Tohomish 1 he is greatest ! ” 

He is greatest,” said Multnomah. But Tohomish, 
sitting there dejectedly, seemed neither to see nor 
hear. 

“To-morrow,” said the war-chief, “while the sun 
is new, the chiefs will meet in council and the great 
talk shall be ended. And after it ends, Multnomah’s 
daughter will be given to Snoqualmie, and Multnomah 
will bestow a rich potlatch [a giving of gifts] on the 
people. And then all will be done.” 

The gathering broke up. Gradually, as the Indians 
gazed on the smoking mountains, the excitement pro- 
duced by the oratory they had just heard wore off. 


2o6 the bridge of the gods. 

Only Tohomish’s sombre eloquence, so darkly in 
unison with the menacing aspect of Nature, yet lin- 
gered in every mind. They were frightened and 
startled, apprehensive of something to come. Le- 
gends, superstitious lore of by-gone time connected 
with the ‘‘smoking mountains,” were repeated that 
afternoon wherever little groups of Indians had met 
together. Through all these gathered tribes ran a 
dread yet indefinable whisper of apprehension, like 
the first low rustle of the leaves that foreruns the 
coming storm. 

Over the valley Mount Adams towered, wrapped in 
dusky cloud ; and from Mount Hood streamed inter- 
mittent bursts of smoke and gleams of fire that grew 
plainer as the twilight fell. Louder, as the hush of 
evening deepened, came the sullen roar from the 
crater of Mount Hood. Below the crater, the ice- 
fields that had glistened in unbroken whiteness the 
previous day were now furrowed with wide black 
streaks, from which the vapor of melting snow and 
burning lava ascended in dense wreaths. Men wiser 
than these ignorant savages would have said that 
some terrible convulsion was at hand. 

Multnomah’s announcement in the council was a 
dreadful blow to Cecil, though he had expected it. His 
first thought was of a personal appeal to the chief, but 
one glance at the iron features of the autocrat told him 
that it would be a hopeless undertaking. No appeal 
could turn Multnomah from his purpose. For Cecil, 
such an undertaking might be death; it certainly 
would be contemptuous refusal, and would call down 
on Wallulah the terrible wrath before which the 
bravest sachem quailed. 


ORATOR AGAINST ORATOR. 207 

Cecil left the grove with the other chiefs and found 
his way to his lodge. There he flung himself down 
on his face upon his couch of furs. The Indian 
woman, his old nurse, who still clung to him, was 
absent, and for some time he was alone. After a 
while the flap that hung over the entrance was lifted, 
and some one came in with the noiseless tread of the 
Indian. Cecil, lying in a maze of bitter thought, 
became aware of the presence of another, and raised 
his head. The Shoshone renegade stood beside him. 
His gaze rested compassionately on Cecil’s sad, worn 
face. 

What is it? ” he asked. Your words were slow 
and heavy to-day. There was a weight on your spirit ; 
what is it? You said that we were friends, so I came 
to ask if I could help.” 

You are good, and like a brother,” replied Cecil, 
gently, “ but I cannot tell you my trouble. Yet 
this much I can tell, ” — and he sat upon the couch, 
his whole frame trembling with excitement. I 
have sinned a grievous sin, therefore the Great Spirit 
took away the words from my lips to-day. My heart 
has become evil, and God has punished me.” 

It was a relief to his over-burdened conscience to 
say those harsh things of himself, yet the relief was 
bitter. Over the bronzed face of the Indian came an 
expression of deep pity. 

The white man tears himself with his own claws 
like a wounded beast, but it does not give him peace. 
Has he done evil? Then let him remember what he 
has so often told the Indians : ‘ Forsake evil, turn 
from sin, and the Great Spirit will forgive.’ Let my 
white brother do this, and it will be well with him.” 


2o8 the bridge of the gods. 

He gazed at Cecil an instant longer ; then, with a 
forbearance that more civilized men do not always 
show, he left the lodge without another word. 

But what he said had its effect. Through Cecil’s 
veins leaped the impulse of a sudden resolve, — a 
resolve that was both triumph and agony. He fell on 
his knees beside the couch. 

‘‘ Thou hast shown me my duty by the lips of the 
Indian, and I will perform it. I will tear this forbidden 
love from my heart. Father, help me. Once before 
I resolved to do this and failed. Help me that I 
fail not now. Give me strength. Give me the 
mastery over the flesh, O God ! Help me to put 
this temptation from me. Help me to fulfil my 
mission.” 

The struggle was long and doubtful, but the victory 
was won at last. When Cecil arose from his knees, 
there was the same set and resolute look upon his 
face that was there the morning he entered the wil- 
derness, leaving friends and home behind him for- 
ever, — the look that some martyr of old might have 
worn, putting from him the clinging arms of wife or 
child, going forth to the dungeon and the stake. 

It is done,” murmured the white lips. I have 
put her from me. My mission to the Indians alone 
fills my heart. But God help her ! God help her ! ” 

For the hardest part of it all was that he sacrificed 
her as well as himself. 

It must be,” he thought ; ** I must give her up. I 
will go now and tell her ; then I will never look upon 
her face again. But oh ! what will become of her? ” 

And his long fingers were clinched as in acutest 
pain. But his sensitive nerves, his intense suscepti- 


OJ^ATOR AGAINST ORATOR. 209 

bilities were held in abeyance by a will that, once 
roused, was strong even unto death. 

He went out. It was dark. Away to the east Mount 
Hood lifted its blazing crater into the heavens like a 
gigantic torch, and the roar of the eruption came 
deep and hoarse through the stillness of night. Once, 
twice, it seemed to Cecil that the ground trembled 
slightly under his feet. The Indians were huddled in 
groups watching the burning crest of the volcano. 
As the far-off flickering light fell on their faces, it 
showed them to be full of abject fear. 

‘‘ It is like the end of the world,” thought Cecil. 
“ Would that it were ; then she and I might die 
together.” 

He left the camp and took the trail through the 
wood to the trysting- place ; for, late as it was, he 
knew that she awaited him. 


*4 


210 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


IN THE DARK. 


There is not one upon life’s weariest way, 
Who is weary as I am weary of all but death. 


Swinburne. 



HE grim sentinels by the pathway, who had been 


so reluctant to let Cecil pass the day before, were 
still more reluctant this evening. One of them planted 
himself in the trail directly in front of Cecil, and did 
not offer to let him go on, but stood sullenly blocking 
the way. Cecil touched the warrior’s arm and bade 
him stand aside. For an instant it seemed that he 
would refuse, but his superstitious respect for the white 
tomanowos overcame his obstinacy, — and he stepped 
unwillingly back. 

But as Cecil went on he felt, and felt rightly, that 
they would not let him pass again, — that the last act, 
be it what it might, in his love drama, was drawing 
to a close. 

A few moments’ walk, and he saw in the dark the 
little figure awaiting him under the trees. She came 
slowly forward to meet him. He saw that her face 
was very pale, her eyes large and full of woe. She 
gave him her hands ; they felt like ice. He bent over 
her and kissed her with quivering lips. 

Poor child,” he said, putting his arms around her 
slender form and drawing it close in his embrace, 


IN’ THE DARN. 


211 


*‘how can I ever tell you what I have to tell you 
to-night ! ” 

She did not respond to his caress. At length, 
looking up in a lifeless, stricken way, she spoke in a 
mechanical voice, a voice that did not sound like 
her own, — 

I know it already. My father came and told me 
that to-morrow I must — ” She shuddered ; her voice 
broke ; then she threw her arms around his neck and 
clung to him passionately. But they can never tear 
me away from you ; never, never ! ” 

How could he tell her that he came to put her 
away from him, that he came to bid her farewell? 
He clasped her the tighter in his arms. For an 
instant his mind swept all the chances of flight with 
her, only to realize their utter hopelessness ; then he 
remembered that even to think of such a thing was 
treachery to the resolves he had just made. He 
shook from head to foot with stormy emotion. 

She lifted her head from his breast, where it was 
pillowed. 

Let us get horses or a canoe, and fly to-night to 
the desert or the sea, — anywhere, anywhere, only to 
be away from here ! Let us take the trail you came 
on, and find our way to your people.” 

“Alas,” replied Cecil, “how could we escape? 
Every tribe, far and near, is tributary to your father. 
The runners would rouse them as soon as we were 
missed. The swiftest riders would be on our trail ; 
ambuscades would lurk for us in every thicket ; we 
could never escape ; and even if we should, a whole 
continent swarming with wild tribes lies between us 
and my land.” 


212 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS, 

She looked at him in anguish, with dim eyes, and 
her arms slipped from around his neck. 

Do you no longer love Wallulah ? Something 
tells me that you would not wish to fly with me, even 
if we could escape. There is something you have not 
told me.” 

Clasping her closely to him, he told her how he 
felt it was the will of God that they must part. God 
had sent him on a sacred mission, and he dared not 
turn aside. Either her love or the redemption of the 
tribes of the Wauna must be given up ; and for their 
sake love must be sacrificed. 

“ To-day God took away the words from my lips 
and the spirit from my heart. My soul was lead. I 
felt like one accursed. Then it came to me that it 
was because I turned aside from my mission to love 
you. We must part. Our ways diverge. I must 
walk my own pathway alone wheresoever it leads me. 
God commands, and I must obey.” 

The old rapt look came back, the old set, deter- 
mined expression which showed that that delicate 
organization could grow as strong as granite in its 
power to endure. 

Wallulah shrank away from him, and strove to free 
herself from his embrace. 

“ Let me go,” she said, in a low, stifled tone. 

Oh, if I could only die ! ” 

But he held her close, almost crushing the delicate 
form against his breast. She felt his heart beat deep- 
ly and painfully against her own, and in some way it 
came to her that every throb was agony, that he was 
in the extremity of mental and physical suffering. 

God help me ! ” he said ; “ how can I give you up ? ” 


IN THE DARK. 


213 


She realized by woman’s intuition that his whole 
soul was wrung with pain, with an agony darker and 
bitterer than her own; and the exceeding greatness 
of his suffering gave her strength. A sudden revulsion 
of feeling affected her. She looked up at him with 
infinite tenderness. 

I wish I could take all the pain away from you 
and bear it myself.” 

“ It is God’s will ; we must submit to it.” 

** His will ! ” Her voice was full of rebellion. ‘‘Why 
does he give us such bitter suffering? Doesn’t he 
care ? I thought once that God was good, but it is all 
dark now.” 

“ Hush, you must not think so. After all, it will be 
only a little while till we meet in heaven, and there 
no one can take you from me.” 

“ Heaven is so far off. The present is all that I 
can see, and it is as black as death. Death ! it would 
be sweet to die now with your arms around me ; but 
to live year after year with him ! How can I go to 
him, now that I have known you ? How can I bear 
his presence, his touch?” 

She shuddered there in Cecil’s arms. All her 
being shrunk in repugnance at the thought of Sno- 
qualmie. 

“ Thank God for death ! ” said Cecil, brokenly. 

“ It is so long to wait,” she murmured, “ and I am 
so young and strong.” 

His kisses fell on cheek and brow. She drew down 
his head and put her cheek against his and clung to 
him as if she would never let him go. 

It was a strange scene, the mournful parting of the 
lovers in the gloom of the forest and the night. To 


214 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


the east, through the black net-work of leaves and 
branches, a dull red glow marked the crater of Mount 
Hood, and its intermittent roar came to them through 
the silence. It was a night of mystery and horror, — 
a fitting night for their tragedy of love and woe. The 
gloom and terror of their surroundings seemed to 
throw a supernatural shadow over their farewell. 

“ The burning mountain is angry to-night,” said 
Wallulah, at last. Would that it might cover us up 
with its ashes and stones, as the Indians say it once 
did two lovers back in the old time.” 

“ Alas, death never comes to those who wish for it. 
When the grace and sweetness are all fled from our 
lives, and we would be glad to lie down in the grave 
and be at rest, then it is that we must go on living. 
Now I must go. The longer we delay our parting the 
harder it will be.” 

Not yet, not yet ! ” cried Wallulah. Think how 
long I must be alone, — always alone until I die.” 

‘‘ God help us ! ” said Cecil, setting his teeth. “ I 
will dash my mission to the winds and fly with you. 
What if God does forsake us, and our souls are lost ! 
I would rather be in the outer darkness with you than 
in heaven without you.” 

His resolution had given way at last. But in such 
cases, is it not always the woman that is strongest ? 

‘‘ No,” she said, ‘^you told me that your God would 
forsake you if you did. It must not be.” 

She withdrew herself from his arms and stood look- 
ing at him. He saw in the moonlight that her pale 
tear-stained face had upon it a sorrowful resignation, 
a mournful strength, born of very hopelessness. 

** God keep you, Wallulah ! ” murmured Cecil, bro- 


IN THE DARK. 215 

kenly. If I could only feel that he would shelter 
and shield you ! ” 

‘‘That may be as it will,” replied the sweet, patient 
lips. “ I do not know. I shut my eyes to the future. 
I only want to take myself away from you, so that your 
God will not be angry with you. Up there,” she said, 
pointing, “I will meet you sometime and be with 
you forever. God will not be angry then. Now 
farewell.” 

He advanced with outstretched arms. She mo- 
tioned him back. 

“ It will make it harder,” she said. 

For a moment she looked into his eyes, her own 
dark, dilated, full of love and sadness ; for a moment 
all that was within him thrilled to the passionate, yearn- 
ing tenderness of her gaze ; then she turned and went 
away without a word. 

He could not bear to see her go, and yet he knew 
it must end thus ; he dared not follow her or call her 
back. But so intense was his desire for her to return, 
. so vehemently did his life cry out after her, that for an 
instant it seemed to him he had called out, “ Come 
back ! come back ! ” The cry rose to his lips ; but he 
set his teeth and held it back. They must part ; was 
it not God’s will? The old pain at his heart re- 
turned, a faintness was on him, and he reeled to the 
ground. 

Could it be that her spirit felt that unuttered cry, 
and that it brought her back? Be this as it may, 
while he was recovering from his deadly swoon he 
dimly felt her presence beside him, and the soft cool 
touch of her fingers on his brow. Then — or did he 
imagine it? — her lips, cold as those of the dead. 


2i6 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


touched his own. But when consciousness entirely 
returned, he was alone in the forest. 

Blind, dizzy, staggering with weakness, he found 
his way to the camp. Suddenly, as he drew near it, 
he felt the earth sway and move beneath him like a 
living thing. He caught hold of a tree to escape 
being thrown to the ground. There came an awful 
burst of flame from Mount Hood. Burning cinders and 
scoria lit up the eastern horizon like a fountain of fire. 
Then down from the great canyon of the Columbia, 
from the heart of the Cascade Range, broke a mighty 
thundering sound, as if half a mountain had fallen. 
Drowning for a moment the roar of the volcano, the 
deep echo rolled from crag to crag, from hill to hill. 
A wild chorus of outcries rang from the startled camp, 
— the fierce, wild cry of many tribes mad with fear 
yet breathing forth tremulous defiance, the cry of hu- 
man dread mingling with the last echoes of that 
mysterious crash. 


QUESTIONING THE DEAD. 


21 7 


CHAPTER IX. 


QUESTIONING THE DEAD. 


Then he said : “ Cold lips and breast without breath, 
Is there no voice, no language of death ? ” 


Edwin Arnold. 


HILE Cecil was on his way that evening to seek 



^ ^ Wallulah, a canoe with but a single occupant 
was dropping down the Columbia toward one of the 
many mimaluse^ or death-islands, that are washed by 
its waters. 

An Indian is always stealthy, but there was an 
almost more than Indian stealthiness about this 
canoe-man’s movements. Noiselessly, as the twilight 
deepened into darkness, the canoe glided out of a 
secluded cove not far from the camp; noiselessly 
the paddle dipped into the water, and the canoe 
passed like a shadow into the night. 

On the rocky mimaluse island, some distance be- 
low the mouth of the Willamette, the Indian landed 
and drew his boat up on the beach. He looked 
around for a moment, glanced at the red glow that 
lit the far-off crest of Mount Hood, then turned and 
went up the pathway to the ancient burial hut. 

Who was it that had dared to visit the island of the 
dead after dark ? The bravest warriors were not capa- 
ble of such temerity. Old men told how, away back 
in the past, some braves had ventured upon the island 


2i8 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


after nightfall, and had paid the awful forfeit. They 
were struck by unseen hands. Weapons that had lain 
for years beside the decaying corpses of forgotten 
warriors wounded them in the dark. Fleeing to their 
canoes in swiftest fear, they found the shadowy pur- 
suit was swifter still, and were overtaken and struck 
down, while the whole island rung with mocking 
laughter. One only escaped, plunging all torn and 
bruised into the river and swimming to the farther 
shore. When he looked back, the island was covered 
with moving lights, and the shrill echo of fiendish 
mirth came to him across the water. His compan- 
ions were never seen again. A little while afterward 
the dogs barked all night around his lodge, and in the 
morning he was found lying dead upon his couch, his 
face ghastly and drawn with fear, as if at some fright- 
ful apparition. 

“ He disturbed the mimaluse tillicums [dead peo- 
ple], and they came for him,” said the old medicine 
men, as they looked at him. 

Since then, no one had been on the island except 
in the daytime. Little bands of mourners had brought 
hither the swathed bodies of their dead, laid them in 
the burial hut, lifted the wail over them, and left upon 
the first approach of evening. 

Who, then, was this, — the first for generations to set 
foot on the mimaluse illahee after dark? 

It could be but one, the only one among all the 
tribes who would have dared to come, and to come 
alone, — Multnomah, the war- chief, who knew not 
what it was to fear the living or the dead. 

Startled by the outburst of the great smoking moun- 
tains, which always presaged woe to the Willamettes, 


QUESTIONING THE DEAD. 219 

perplexed by Tohomish’s mysterious hints of some 
impending calamity, weighed down by a dread pre- 
sentiment, he came that night on a strange and super- 
stitious errand. 

On the upper part of the island, above reach of 
high water, the burial hut loomed dark and still in 
the moonlight as the chief approached it. 

Some of the Willamettes, like the Chinooks, prac- 
tised canoe burial, but the greater part laid their dead 
in huts, as did also the Klickitats and the Cascades. 

The war-chief entered the hut. The rude boards 
that covered the roof were broken and decayed. The 
moonlight shone through many openings, lighting 
up the interior with a dim and ghostly radiance. 
There, swathed in crumbling cerements, ghastly in 
shrunken flesh and protruding bone, lay the dead of 
the line of Multnomah, — the chiefs of the blood 
royal who had ruled the Willamettes for many gen- 
erations. The giant bones of warriors rested beside 
the more delicate skeletons of their women, or the 
skeletons, slenderer still, of little children of the 
ancient race. The warrior’s bow lay beside him with 
rotting string ; the child’s playthings were still clasped 
in fleshless fingers ; beside the squaw’s skull the ear- 
pendants of hiagua shells lay where they had fallen 
from the crumbling flesh years before. 

Near the door, and where the slanting moonbeams 
fell full upon it, was the last who had been borne to 
the death hut, the mother of Wallulah. Six years be- 
fore Multnomah had brought her body, — brought it 
alone, with no eye to behold his grief; and since 
then no human tread had disturbed the royal burial- 
place. 


220 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


He came now and looked down upon the body. 
It had been tightly swathed, fold upon fold, in some 
oriental fabric ; and the wrappings, stiffened by time, 
still showed what had once been a rare symmetry of 
form. The face was covered with a linen cloth, yel- 
low now through age and fitting like a mask to the 
features. The chief knelt down and drew away the 
face-cloth. The countenance, though shrunken, was 
almost perfectly preserved. Indeed, so well pre- 
served were many of the corpses the first white set- 
tlers found on these mimaluse islands as to cause at 
one time a belief that the Indians had some secret 
process of embalming their dead. There was no such 
process, however, — nothing save the antiseptic prop- 
erties of the ocean breeze which daily fanned the 
burial islands of the lower Columbia. 

Lovely indeed must the mother of Wallulah have 
been in her life. Withered as her features were, 
there was a delicate beauty in them still, — in the 
graceful brow, the regular profile, the exquisitely chis- 
elled chin. Around the shoulders and the small 
shapely head her hair had grown in rich luxuriant 
masses. 

The chief gazed long on the shrunken yet beauti- 
ful face. His iron features grew soft, as none but 
Wallulah had ever seen them grow. He touched 
gently the hair of his dead wife, and put it back from 
her brow with a wistful, caressing tenderness. He 
had never understood her; she had always been a 
mystery to him ; the harsh savagery of his nature had 
never been able to enter into or comprehend the 
refined grace of hers ; but he had loved her with all 
the fierce, tenacious, secretive power of his being, a 


QUESTIONING THE DEAD. 


221 


power that neither time nor death could change. 
Now he spoke to her, his low tones sounding weird 
in that house of the dead, — a strange place for words 
of love. 

My woman, — mine yet, for death itself cannot 
take from Multnomah that which is his own; my 
bird that came from the sea and made its nest for a 
little while in the heart of Multnomah and then flew 
away and left it empty, — I have been hungry to see 
you, to touch your hair and look upon your face 
again. Now I am here, and it is sweet to be with 
you, but the heart of Multnomah listens to hear you 
speak.” 

He still went on stroking her hair softly, reverently. 
It seemed the only caress of which he was capable, 
but it had in it a stern and mournful tenderness. 

Speak to me ! The dead talk to the tomanowos 
men and the dreamers. You are mine ; talk to me ; 
I am in need. The shadow of something terrible to 
come is over the Willamette. The smoking moun- 
tains are angry; the dreamers see only bad signs; 
there are black things before Multnomah, and he can- 
not see what they are. Tell me, — the dead are wise 
and know that which comes, — what is this unknown 
evil which threatens me and mine? ” 

He looked down at her with intense craving, in- 
tense desire, as if his imperious will could reanimate 
that silent clay and force to the mute lips the words 
he so desired. But the still lips moved not, and the 
face lay cold under his burning and commanding gaze. 
The chief leaned closer over her ; he called her name 
aloud, — something that the Willamette Indians rarely 
did, for they believed that if the names of the dead 


222 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


were spoken, even in conversation, it would bring 
them back ; so they alluded to their lost ones only in- 
directly, and always reluctantly and with fear. 

‘‘ Come back ! ” said he, repeating the name he 
had not spoken for six years. You are my own, you 
are my woman. Hear me, speak to me, you whom 
I love ; you who, living or dead, are still the wife of 
Multnomah.” 

No expression flitted over the changeless calm of 
the face beneath him : no sound came back to his 
straining ears except the low intermittent roar of the 
far-off volcano. 

A sorrowful look crossed his face. As has been 
said, there was an indefinable something always be- 
tween them, which perhaps must ever be between 
those of diverse race. It had been the one mystery 
that puzzled him while she was living, and it seemed 
to glide, viewless yet impenetrable, between them 
now. He rose to his feet. 

It comes between us again,” he thought, looking 
down at her mournfully. ‘‘ It pushed me back when 
she was living, and made me teel that I stood outside 
her heart even while my arms were around her. It 
comes between us now and will not let her speak. If 
it was only something I could see and grapple with ! ” 

And the fierce warrior felt his blood kindle within 
him, that not only death but something still more 
mysterious and incomprehensible should separate him 
from the one he loved. He turned sadly away and 
passed on to the interior of the hut. As he gazed 
on the crumbling relics of humanity around him, the 
wonted look of command came back to his brow. 
These should obey ; by iron strength of will and mys- 


QUESTIONING THE DEAD. 


223 


tic charm he would sway them to his bidding. The 
withered lips of death, or spirit voices, should tell him 
what he wished to know. Abjectly superstitious as 
was the idea it involved, there was yet something 
grand in his savage despotic grasp after power that, 
dominating all he knew of earth, sought to bend to 
his will even the spirit-land. 

The chief believed that the departed could talk to 
him if they would ; for did they not talk to the medi- 
cine men and the dreamers ? If so, why not to him, the 
great chief, the master of all the tribes of the Wauna ? 

He knelt down, and began to sway his body back 
and forth after the manner of the Nootka shamansy 
and to chant a long, low, monotonous song, in which 
the names of the dead who lay there were repeated 
over and over again. 

Kamyah, Tlesco, Che-aqah, come back ! come 
back and tell me the secret, the black secret, the 
death secret, the woe that is to come. Winelah, 
Sic-mish, Tlaquatin, the land is dark with signs 
and omens ; the hearts of men are heavy with dread ; 
the dreamers say that the end is come for Multno- 
mah and his race. Is it true ? Come and tell me. 
I wait, I listen, I speak your names j come back, 
come back ! ” 

Tohomish himself would not have dared to repeat 
those names in the charnel hut, lest those whom he 
invoked should spring upon him and tear him to 
pieces. No more potent or more perilous charm 
was known to the Indians. 

Ever as Multnomah chanted, the sullen roar of the 
volcano came like an undertone and filled the pauses 
of the wild incantation. And as he went on, it 


224 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


seemed to the chief that the air grew thick with 
ghostly presences. There was a sense of breathing 
life all around him. He felt that others, many others, 
were with him j yet he saw nothing. When he paused 
for some voice, some whisper of reply, this sense of 
hyper-physical perception became so acute that he 
could almost see^ almost heaVy in the thick blackness 
and the silence ; yet no answer came. 

Again he resumed his mystic incantation, putting 
all the force of his nature into the effort, until it 
seemed that even those shadowy things of the night 
must yield to his blended entreaty and command. 
But there came no response. Thick and thronging 
the viewless presences seemed to gather, to look, and 
to listen; but no reply came to his ears, and no 
sight met his eyes save the swathed corpses and the 
white-gleaming bones on which the shifting moon- 
beams fell. 

Multnomah rose to his feet, baffled, thwarted, all 
his soul glowing with anger that he should be so 
scorned. 

“ Why is this? ” said his stem voice in the silence. 

You come, but you give no reply ; you look, you 
listen, but you make no sound. Answer me, you who 
know the future ; tell me this secret ! ” 

Still no response. Yet the air seemed full of dense, 
magnetic life, of muffled heart-beats, of voiceless, un- 
responsive, uncommunicative forms that he could al- 
most touch. 

For perhaps the first time in his life the war-chief 
found himself set at naught. His form grew erect ; his 
eyes gleamed with the terrible wrath which the tribes 
dreaded as they dreaded the wrath of the Great Spirit. 



« ^OME back! Come back!"''' 












vv 








i. .1 


**!• 




■;., ■■’’'■4''^® '^*i 

.a7a ' ' 11 I v* - #ri 


, , *' - 


>• 





JV 


jy, 




.«u. 


& 




V 


' '"■ ■* *’■* 

. . iyV, 


*. -iryi' 





. W ■»•■ 


• 1 ^ *1 






n \‘^' ♦ 


%•» • ?' 


..-i. A 


K‘ 


7H' 


<^-: 




1 r 


. 4 


» ar 


H 


^ \ 


A. . 


’<j!£-«\T:: 


'n* 


.■v. 


v-:?* 


S^. “• 




^ '■ 




ni 




•r*J| < 


VJ 




i. s • 

* ?* ■ 




'.^1 




- 


hti 






.-V * t ' ■ . 

# • * I 




!'■» 


^ f • 

* ‘ ♦ y 

‘j, — -- 5 ',..,. 


t tvi- 


LU’ 


111 




■St *-1 




r*. f 


•>. 























^ .m. 

II^'V -^1 




ri 


'' ‘. 45 . 



^ ... i \r ^ . J ' . - /■ i ^ 


1 *•», 






1' 


. .< ‘A 

*•: i * A\^ 


r-n^ • T - ■ - ^ ‘ * 

" " ■’ ' '■ " asy^y-: 





(V 


^•vT;..;: . ;; 

it&S.ii ,.' .iv t* . 

■■ ^ 

%iS-. ■ 


' » • ^ * ' '■*«?’. i * 

^'' 

‘/A- <■ '■^ ■■™'''-- 


} 


• 




j'^ ^• 

«6 • an 


• vr. 




4 




Vm.\ 




’1^ 






. « 




O- 




:&y^: j .. . ■ i' \ " 

.fcj. 


i t V. 



• . * 





^j- y*. 






. %' .• # 


‘ r'lS® r 


dL .^ r. y55^^'A.-■LJt^^'■ , Va • ' 


14 ^ 





QUESTIONING THE DEAD. 


225 


“ Do you mock Multnomah ? Am I not war-chief 
of the Willamettes? Though you dwell in shadow 
and your bodies are dust, you are Willamettes, and I 
am still your chief. Give up your secret ! If the 
Great Spirit has sealed your lips so that you cannot 
speak, give me a sign that will tell me. Answer by 
word or sign \ I say it, — I, Multnomah, your chief and 
master.” 

Silence again. The roar of the volcano had ceased ; 
and an ominous stillness brooded over Nature, as if all 
things held their breath, anticipating some mighty 
and imminent catastrophe. Multnomah’s hands were 
clinched, and his strong face had on it now a fierce- 
ness of command that no eye had ever seen before. 
His indomitable will reached out to lay hold of those 
unseen presences and compel them to reply. 

A moment of strained, commanding expectation : 
then the answer came ; the sign was given. The earth 
shook beneath him till he staggered, almost fell ; the 
hut creaked and swayed like a storm-driven wreck ; and 
through the crevices on the side toward Mount Hood 
came a blinding burst of flame. Down from the great 
gap in the Cascade Range through which flows the 
Columbia rolled the far-off thundering crash which 
had so startled Cecil and appalled the tribes. Then, 
tenfold louder than before, came again the roar of the 
volcano. 

Too well Multnomah knew what had gone down in 
that crash; too well did he read the sign that had 
been given. For a moment it seemed as if all the 
strength of his heart had broken with that which had 
fallen ; then the proud dignity of his character reas- 
serted itself, even in the face of doom. 

15 


226 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


It has come at last, as the wise men of old said it 
would. The end is at hand ; the Willamettes pass like 
a shadow from the earth. The Great Spirit has for- 
saken us, our tomanowos has failed us. But my own 
heart fails me not, and my own arm is strong. Like a 
war-chief will I meet that which is to come. Multno- 
mah falls, but he falls as the Bridge has fallen, with a 
crash that will shake the earth, with a ruin that shall 
crush all beneath him even as he goes down.” 

Turning away, his eyes fell on the body of his wife 
as he passed toward the door. Aroused and desper- 
ate as he was, he stopped an instant and looked down 
at her with a long, lingering look, a look that seemed 
to say, “ I shall meet you ere many suns. Death and 
ruin but give you back to me the sooner. There 
will be nothing between us then ; I shall understand 
you at last.” 

Then he drew his robe close around him, and went 
out into the night. 


BOOK V. 

THE SHADOW OF THE END. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE HAND OF THE GREAT SPIRIT. 

“ We view as one who hath an evil sight,” 

He answered, “ plainly objects far remote.” 

Carev: Dante. 

night came to an end at last, — a night not 
soon forgotten by the Oregon Indians, and 
destined to be remembered in tale and tomanowos 
lore long after that generation had passed away. 
The sky was thick with clouds; the atmosphere was 
heavy with smoke, which, dense and low-hanging in 
the still weather, shut out the entire horizon. The 
volcano was invisible in the smoky air, but its low 
mutterings came to them from time to time. 

The chiefs met early in the grove of council. 
Multnomah’s countenance told nothing of the night 
before, but almost all the rest showed something yet 
of superstitious fear. Mishlah’s face was haggard, 
his air startled and uneasy, like that of some forest 
animal that had been terribly frightened; and even 
Snoqualmie looked worn. But the greatest change of 
all was in Tohomish. His face was as ghastly as that 


228 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


of a corpse, and he came into the council walking in 
a dull lifeless way, as if hardly aware of what he was 
doing. Those nearest to him shrank away, whisper- 
ing to one another that the seer looked like a dead 
man. 

Cecil came last. The severe mental conflict of the 
past night had told almost fatally on a frame already 
worn out by years of toil and sickness. His cheek 
was pale, his eye hollow, his step slow and faltering, 
like one whose flame of life is burning very low. The 
pain at his heart, always worse in times of exhaustion, 
was sharp and piercing. 

He looked agitated and restless ; he had tried 
hard to give Wallulah into the hands of God and feel 
that she was safe, but he could not. For himself he 
had no thought ; but his whole soul was wrung with 
pain for her. By virtue of his own keen sympathies, 
he anticipated and felt all that the years had in store 
for her, — the loneliness, the heartache, the trying to 
care for one she loathed; until he shrank from her 
desolate and hopeless future as if it had been his 
own. All his soul went out to her in yearning tender- 
ness, in passionate desire to shield her and to take 
away her burden. 

But his resolution never wavered. Below the ebb 
and flow of feeling, the decision to make their separa- 
tion final was as unchanging as granite. He could 
not bear to look upon her face again ; he could not 
bear to see her wedded to Snoqualmie. He intended 
to make one last appeal to the Indians this morning 
to accept the gospel of peace ; then he would leave 
the council before Wallulah was brought to it. So 
he sat there now, waiting for the talk ” to begin. 


THE HAND OF THE GREAT SPIRIT. 229 

The bands gathered around the grove were smaller 
than usual. Many had fled from the valley at dawn 
to escape from the dreaded vicinity of the smoking 
mountains ; many hundreds remained, but they were 
awed and frightened. No war could have appalled 
them as they were appalled by the shaking of the 
solid earth under their feet. All the abject supersti- 
tion of their natures was roused. They looked like 
men who felt themselves caught in the grasp of some 
supernatural power. 

Multnomah opened the council by saying that two 
runners had arrived with news that morning ; the one 
from the sea-coast, the other from up the Columbia. 
They would come before the council and tell the 
news they had brought. 

The runner from the upper Columbia spoke first. 
He had come thirty miles since dawn. He seemed 
unnerved and fearful, like one about to announce 
some unheard-of calamity. The most stoical bent 
forward eagerly to hear. 

The Great Spirit has shaken the earth, and the 
Bridge of the Gods has falle7i / ” 

There was the silence of amazement ; then through 
the tribes passed in many tongues the wild and won- 
dering murmur, The Bridge of the Gods has fallen ! 
The Bridge of the Gods has fallen ! ” With it, too, 
went the recollection of the ancient prophecy that 
when the Bridge fell the power of the Willamettes 
would also fall. Now the Bridge was broken, and 
the dominion of the Willamettes was broken forever 
with it. At another time the slumbering jealousy of 
the tribes would have burst forth in terrific vengeance 
on the doomed race. But they were dejected and 


230 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

afraid. In the fall of the Bridge they saw the hand 
of the Great Spirit, a visitation of God. And so 
Willamette and tributary alike heard the news with 
fear and apprehension. Only Multnomah, who knew 
the message before it was spoken, listened with his 
wonted composure. 

It is well,” he said, with more than Indian dupli- 
city ; “ the daughter of Multnomah is to become the 
wife of Snoqualmie the Cayuse, and the new line 
that commences with their children will give new 
chiefs to head the confederacy of the Wauna. The 
old gives way to the new. That is the sign that the 
Great Spirit gives in the fall of the Bridge. Think 
you it means that the war-strength is gone from us, 
that we shall no longer prevail in battle ? No, no ! 
who thinks it?” 

The proud old sachem rose to his feet ; his giant 
form towered over the multitude, and every eye fell 
before the haughty and scornful glance that swept 
council and audience like a challenge to battle. 

Is there a chief here that thinks it? Let him 
step out, let him grapple with Multnomah in the 
death-grapple, and see. Is there a tribe that thinks 
it? We reach out our arms to them; we are ready. 
Let them meet us in battle now, to-day, and know if 
our hearts have become the hearts of women. Will 
you come? We will give you dark and bloody proof 
that our tomahawks are still sharp and our arms are 
strong.” 

He stood with outstretched arms, from which the 
robe of fur had fallen back. A thrill of dread went 
through the assembly at the grim defiance ; then 
Snoqualmie spoke. 


THE HAND OF THE GREAT SPIRIT. 231 

‘‘ The heart of all the tribes is as the heart of 
Multnomah. Let there be peace.” 

The chief resumed his seat. His force of will had 
wrung one last victory from fate itself. Instantly, and 
with consummate address, Multnomah preoccupied the 
attention of the council before anything could be said 
or done to impair the effect of his challenge. He 
bade the other runner, the one from the sea-coast, 
deliver his message. 

It was, in effect, this : — 

A large canoe, with great white wings like a bird, 
had come gliding over the waters to the coast near the 
mouth of the Wauna. Whence it came no one could 
tell ; but its crew were pale of skin like the great white 
shaman there in the council, and seemed of his race. 
Some of them came ashore in a small canoe to trade 
with the Indians, but trouble rose between them and 
there was a battle. The strangers slew many Indians 
with their magic, darting fire at them from long black 
tubes. Then they escaped to the great canoe, which 
spread its wings and passed away from sight into the 
sea. Many of the Indians were killed, but none of the 
pale-faced intruders. Now the band who had suffered 
demanded that the white man of whom they had heard 
— the white chief at the council — be put to death 
to pay the blood-debt. 

All eyes turned on Cecil, and he felt that his hour 
was come. Weak, exhausted in body and mind, wea- 
ried almost to death, a sudden and awful peril was on 
him. For a moment his heart sank, his brain grew 
dizzy. How could he meet this emergency ? All his 
soul went out to God with a dumb prayer for help, 
with an overwhelming sense of weakness. Then he 


232 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

heard Multnomah speaking to him in cold, hard 
tones. 

** The white man has heard the words of the runner. 
What has he to say why his life should not pay the 
blood-debt? ” 

Cecil rose to his feet. With one last effort he put 
Wallulah, himself, his mission, into the hands of God ; 
with one last effort he forced himself to speak. 

Men of nervous temperament, like Cecil, can bring 
out of an exhausted body an energy, an outburst of 
final and intense effort, of which those of stronger 
physique do not seem capable. But it drains the 
remaining vital forces, and the reaction is terrible. 
Was it this flaming-up of the almost bumed-out em- 
bers of life that animated Cecil now? Or was it the 
Divine Strength coming to him in answer to prayer? 
Be this as it may, when he opened his lips to speak, 
all the power of his consecration came back ; physical 
weakness and mental anxiety left him ; he felt that 
Wallulah was safe in the arms of the Infinite Compas- 
sion ; he felt his love for the Indians, his deep yearn- 
ing to help them, to bring them to God, rekindling 
within him ; and never had he been more grandly the 
Apostle to the Indians than now. 

In passionate tenderness, in burning appeal, in liv- 
ing force and power of delivery, it was the supreme 
effort of his life. He did not plead for himself; he ig- 
nored, put aside, forgot his own personal danger ; but 
he set before his hearers the wickedness of their own 
system of retaliation and revenge ; he showed them 
how it overshadowed their lives and lay like a dead- 
ening weight on their better natures. The horror, the 
cruelty, the brute animalism of the blood-thirst, the 


THE HAND OF THE GEE AT SPIRIT. 233 

war-lust, was set over against the love and forgiveness 
to which the Great Spirit called them. 

The hearts of the Indians were shaken within 
them. The barbarism which was the outcome of 
centuries of strife and revenge, the dark and cumu- 
lative growth of ages, was stirred to its core by 
the strong and tender eloquence of this one man. 
As he spoke, there came to all those swarthy list- 
eners, in dim beauty, a glimpse of a better life ; 
there came to them a moment’s fleeting revelation 
of something above their own vindictiveness and 
ferocity. That vague longing, that indefinable wist- 
fiilness which he had so often seen on the faces of 
his savage audiences was on nearly every face when 
he closed. 

As he took his seat, the tide of inspiration went 
from him, and a deadly faintness came over him. It 
seemed as if in that awful reaction the last spark of 
vitality was dying out ; but somehow, through it all, 
he felt at peace with God and man. A great quiet 
was upon him ; he was anxious for nothing, he cared 
for nothing, he simply rested as on the living presence 
of the Father. 

Upon the sweet and lingering spell of his closing 
words came Multnomah’s tones in stern contrast. 

What is the word of the council ? Shall the white 
man live or die? ” 

Snoqualmie was on his feet in an instant. 

Blood for blood. Let the white man die at the 
torture-stake.” 

One by one the chiefs gave their voice for death. 
Shaken for but a moment, the ancient inherited bar- 
barism which was their very life reasserted itself, and 


234 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


they could decide no other way. One, two, three of 
the sachems gave no answer, but sat in silence. They 
were men whose hearts had been touched before by 
Cecil, and who were already desiring the better life. 
They could not condemn their teacher. 

At length it came to Tohomish. He arose. His 
face, always repulsive, was pallid now in the extreme. 
The swathed corpses on mimaluse island looked not 
more sunken and ghastly. 

He essayed to speak ; thrice the words faltered on 
his lips ; and when at last he spoke, it was in a weary, 
lifeless way. His tones startled the audience like an 
electric shock. The marvellous power and sweetness 
were gone from his voice ; its accents were discordant, 
uncertain. Could the death’s head before them be 
that of Tohomish? Could those harsh and broken 
tones be those of the Pine Voice? He seemed like 
a man whose animal life still survived, but whose soul 
was dead. 

What he said at first had no relation to the matter 
before the council. Every Indian had his tomano- 
wos appointed him by the Great Spirit from his birth, 
and that tomanowos was the strength of his life. Its 
influence grew with his growth ; the roots of his being 
were fed in it ; it imparted its characteristics to him. 
But the name and nature of his tomanowos was the 
one secret that must go with him to the grave. If it 
was told, the charm was lost and the tomanowos de- 
serted him. 

Tohomish’s tomanowos was the Bridge and the fore- 
knowledge of its fall : a black secret that had darkened 
his whole life, and imparted the strange and mournful 
mystery to his eloquence. Now that the Bridge was 


THE HAND OF THE GEE AT SPIRIT. 235 

fallen, the strength was gone from Tohomish’s heart, 
the music from his words. 

“ Tohomish has no voice now,” he continued ; he 
is as one dead. He desires to say only this, then 
his words shall be heard no more among men. The 
fall of the Bridge is a sign that not only the Willa- 
mettes but all the tribes of the Wauna shall fall and 
pass away. Another people shall take our place, 
another race shall reign in our stead, and the Indian 
shall be forgotten, or remembered only as a dim 
memory of the past. 

“ And who are they who bring us our doom ? Look 
on the face of the white wanderer there ; listen to the 
story of your brethren slain at the sea-coast by the 
white men in the canoe, and you will know. They 
come ; they that are stronger, and push us out into the 
dark. The white wanderer talks of peace ; but the 
Great Spirit has put death between the Indian and 
the white man, and where he has put death there can 
be no peace. 

“Slay the white man as the white race will slay 
your children in the time that is to come. Peace ? 
love ? There can be only war and hate. Striking back 
blow for blow like a wounded rattlesnake, shall the red 
man pass ; and when the bones of the last Indian of 
the Wauna lie bleaching on the prairie far from the 
mimaluse island of his fathers, then there will be peace. 

“ Tohomish has spoken \ his words are ended, and 
ended forever.” 

The harsh, disjointed tones ceased. All eyes fell 
again on Cecil, the representative of the race by which 
the Willamettes were doomed. The wrath of all those 
hundreds, the vengeance of all those gathered tribes 


236 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

of the Wauna, the hatred of the whole people he had 
come to save, seemed to rise up and fall upon him, 
the frail invalid with the sharp pain throbbing at his 
heart. 

But that strange peace was on him still, and his 
eyes, dilated and brilliant in the extremity of physical 
pain, met those lowering brows with a look of exceed- 
ing pity. 

Multnomah rose to pronounce sentence. For him 
there could be but one decision, and he gave it, — the 
clinched hand, the downward gesture, that said. 
There is death between us. We will slay as we 
shall be slain.’* 

Cecil was on his feet, though it seemed as if he 
must fall within the moment. He fought down the 
pain that pierced his heart like a knife ; he gathered 
the last resources of an exhausted frame for one more 
effort. The executioners sprang forward with the 
covering for his eyes that was to shut out the light 
forever. His glance, his gesture held them back; 
they paused irresolutely, even in the presence of Mult- 
nomah ; weak as Cecil was, he was the great white 
tomanowos still, and they dared not touch him. 
There was a pause, an intense silence. 

“ I gave up all to come and tell you of God, and 
you have condemned me to die at the torture-stake,” 
said the soft, low voice, sending through their stern 
hearts its thrill and pathos for the last time. “ But 
you shall not bring this blood-stain upon your souls. 
The hand of the Great Spirit is on me ; he takes me 
to himself. Remember — what I have said. The 
Great Spirit loves you. Pray — forgive — be at 
peace. Remember — ” 


THE HAND OF THE GREAT SPIRIT. 237 

The quiver of agonizing pain disturbed the gentle- 
ness of his look j he reeled, and sank to the ground. 
For a moment the slight form shuddered convulsively 
and the hands were clinched ; then the struggle ceased 
and a wonderful brightness shone upon his face. His 
lips murmured something in his own tongue, some- 
thing into which came the name of Wallulah and the 
name of God. Then his eyes grew dim and he lay 
very still. Only the expression of perfect peace still 
rested on the face. Sachems and warriors gazed in 
awe upon the beauty, grand in death, of the one whom 
the Great Spirit had taken from them. Perhaps the 
iron heart of the war-chief was the only one that did 
not feel remorse and self-reproach. 

Ere the silence was broken, an old Indian woman 
came forward from the crowd into the circle of chiefs. 
She looked neither to the right nor to the left, but ad- 
vanced among the warrior-sachems, into whose pres- 
ence no woman had dared intrude herself, and bent 
over the dead. She lifted the wasted body in her 
arms and bore it away, with shut lips and down- 
cast eyes, asking no permission, saying no word. 
The charm that had been around the white shaman in 
life seemed to invest her with its power; for grim 
chieftains made way, the crowd opened to let her 
pass, and even Multnomah looked on in silence. 

That afternoon, a little band of Indians were assem- 
bled in Cecil’s lodge. Some of them were already 
converts ; some were only awakened and impressed ; 
but all were men who loved him. 

They were gathered, men of huge frame, around a 
dead body that lay upon a cougar skin. Their faces 
were sad, their manner was solemn. In the comer 


238 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS, 


sat an aged squaw, her face resting in her hands, her 
long gray hair falling dishevelled about her shoulders. 
In that heart-broken attitude she had sat ever since 
bringing Cecil to the hut. She did not weep or sob, 
but sat motionless, in stoical, dumb despair. 

Around the dead the Indians stood or sat in 
silence, each waiting for the other to say what was in 
the hearts of all. At length the Shoshone renegade, 
who had so loved Cecil, spoke. 

“ Our white brother is gone from us, but the Great 
Spirit lives and dies not. Let us turn from blood 
and sin and walk in the way our brother showed us. 
He said, ‘ Remember ; * and shall we forget ? I choose 
now, while he can hear me, before he is laid in the 
cold ground. I put away from me the old heart 
of hate and revenge. I ask the Great Spirit to give 
me the new heart of love and peace. I have chosen.” 

One by one each told his resolve, the swarthy faces 
lighting up, the stern lips saying unwonted words of 
love. Dim and misty, the dawn had come to them ; 
reaching out in the dark, they had got hold of the 
hand of God and felt that he was a Father. One 
would have said that their dead teacher lying there 
heard their vows, so calm and full of peace was the 
white still face. 

That night the first beams of the rising moon fell 
on a new-made grave under the cottonwoods, not 
far from the bank of the river. Beneath it, silent in 
the last sleep, lay the student whose graceful presence 
had been the pride of far-off Magdalen, the pastor 
whose memory still lingered in New England, the 
evangelist whose burning words had thrilled the tribes 
of the wilderness like the words of some prophet of old. 


THE HAND OF THE GREAT SPIRIT. 239 

Beside the grave crouched the old Indian woman, 
alone and forsaken in her despair, — the one mourner 
out of all for whom his life had been given. 

No, not the only one ; for a tall warrior enters the 
grove ; the Shoshone renegade bends over her and 
touches her gently on the shoulder. 

Come,” he says kindly, our horses are saddled ; 
we take the trail up the Wauna to-night, I and my 
friends. We will fly from this fated valley ere the 
wrath of the Great Spirit falls upon it. Beyond the 
mountains I will seek a new home with the Spokanes 
or the Okanogans. Come ; my home shall be your 
home, because you cared for him that is gone.” 

She shook her head and pointed to the grave. 

** My heart is there ; my life is buried with him. I 
cannot go.” 

Again he urged her. 

No, no,” she replied, with Indian stubbornness ; 

cannot leave him. Was I not like his mother? 
How can I go and leave him for others? The roots 
of the old tree grow not in new soil. If it is pulled 
up it dies.” 

Come with me,” said the savage, with a gentleness 
born of his new faith. Be my mother. We will talk 
of him ; you shall tell me of him and his God. Come, 
the horses wait.” 

Again she shook her head ; then fell forward on the 
grave, her arms thrown out, as if to clasp it in her 
embrace. He tried to lift her; her head fell back, 
and she lay relaxed and motionless in his arms. 

Another grave was made by Cecil’s ; and the little 
band rode through the mountain pass that night, 
toward the country of the Okanogans, v/ithout her. 


240 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


And that same night, an English exploring vessel 
far out at sea sailed southward, leaving behind the 
unknown shores of Oregon, — her crew never dream- 
ing how near they had been to finding the lost 
wanderer, Cecil Grey. 


THE MARRIAGE AND THE BREAKING UP. 241 


CHAPTER II. 


THE MARRIAGE AND THE BREAKING UP. 


Remembering love and all the dead delight, 
And all that time was sweet with for a space. 


Swinburne. 


FTER Cecil had been borne from the council- 



grove, the Indians, rousing themselves from the 
spell of the strange scene they had just witnessed, 
looked around for Tohomish the seer. He was gone. 
No one could remember seeing him go, yet he was 
missing from his accustomed place, and never was he 
seen or heard of more. Upon his fate, lost in the 
common ruin that engulfed his race, the legend casts 
no ray of light. It is certain that the fall of the 
Bridge, with which his life was interwoven, had a 
disastrous effect upon him, and as he said, that the 
strength of his life was broken. It is probable that 
the orator-seer, feeling within himself that his power 
was gone, crept away into the forest to die. Perhaps, 
had they searched for him, they would have found 
him lying lifeless upon the leaves in some dense 
thicket or at the foot of some lonely crag. 

Whatever his fate, the Indians never looked upon 
his face again. 

Multnomah made no comment on the death of 
Cecil, or on the prophecy of Tohomish, so much at 
variance with his own interpretation of the fall of the 


242 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


Bridge. Whatever he had to say was evidently held 
in reserve for the closing talk with which he would 
soon dismiss the council. 

^‘You shall see Multnomah’s daughter given to 
Snoqualmie, and then Multnomah will open his hand 
and make you rich.” 

So said the war-chief ; and a runner was dispatched 
with a summons to Wallulah. In a little while a band 
of Indian girls was seen approaching the grove. Sur- 
rounded by the maidens, as if they were a guard of 
honor, came Wallulah, all unconscious of the tragedy 
that had just been enacted. 

Among the chiefs they passed, and stopped before 
Multnomah. As they paused, Wallulah looked around 
for Cecil in one quick glance ; then, not seeing him, 
she cast down her eyes despondingly. Multnomah 
rose and beckoned Snoqualmie to him. He came 
forward and stood beside the war- chief. The Indian 
girls stepped back a little, in involuntary awe of the 
two great sachems, and left Wallulah standing alone 
before them. 

Her face wore a patient look, as of one who is very 
worn and weary, tired of the burdens of life, yet going 
forward without hope, without thought even, to other 
and still heavier burdens. She was clad in a soft 
oriental fabric ; her hair fell in luxuriant tresses upon 
her shoulders ; her flute hung at her belt by a slender 
chain of gold. 

There was something unspeakably sad and heart- 
broken in her appearance, as she stood there, a 
listless, dejected figure, before those two grim war- 
riors, awaiting her doom. 

Multnomah took her hand ; the fingers of the other 


The marriage and the breaking up. 243 

» 

were clasped around her beloved flute, pressing it 
closely, as if seeking help from its mute companion- 
ship. The chief gave her hand into Snoqualmie’s ; a 
shudder passed through her as she felt his touch, and 
she trembled from head to foot ; then she controlled 
herself by a strong eflbrt. Snoqualmie’s fierce black 
eyes searched her face, as if looking through and 
through her, and she flushed faintly under their 
penetrating gaze. 

“ She is yours,” said the war-chief. ** Be kind to 
her, for though she is your wife she is the daughter 
of Multnomah.” So much did the Indian say for 
love of his child, wondering at her strange, sad look, 
and feeling vaguely that she was unhappy. She tried 
to withdraw her fingers from Snoqualmie’s clasp the 
moment her father was done speaking. He held 
them tightly, however, and bending over her, spoke 
in a low tone. 

“ My band starts for home at mid-day. Be ready 
to go when I send for you.” 

She looked up with startled, piteous eyes. 

“To-day? ” she asked in a choked voice. 

“ To-day,” came the abrupt reply ; too low for the 
others to hear, yet harsh enough to sting her through 
and through. “ Do you think Snoqualmie goes back 
to his illahee and leaves his woman behind?” 

Her spirit kindled in resentment. Never had the 
chiefs daughter been spoken to so harshly ; then all 
at once it came to her that he kneWy — that he must 
have followed Cecil and witnessed one of their last 
interviews. Jealous, revengeful, the Indian was her 
master now. She grew pale to the lips. He released 
her hand, and she shrank away from him, and left the 


244 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

council with her maidens. No one had heard xh^e 
few half-whispered words that passed between them, 
but those who stood nearest noticed the deadly pallor 
that came over her face while Snoqualmie was speak- 
ing. Multnomah saw it, and Snoqualmie caught from 
him a glance that chilled even his haughty nature, — 
a glance that said, Beware; she is the war-chiefs 
daughter.” 

But even if he had known all, Multnomah would 
have sacrificed her. His plans must be carried out, 
even though her heart be crushed. 

Now followed the potlatch., — the giving of gifts. 
At a signal from the war-chief, his slaves appeared, 
laden with presents. Large heaps of rich furs and 
skins were laid on the ground near the chiefs. The 
finest of bows and arrows, with gaily decorated quivers 
and store of bow-strings, were brought. Untold treas- 
ure of hiagua shells, money as well as ornament to 
the Oregon Indians, was poured out upon the ground, 
and lay glistening in the sun in bright-colored masses. 
To the Indians they represented vast and splendid 
wealth. Multnomah was the richest of all the In- 
dians of the Wauna; and the gifts displayed were the 
spoil of many wars, treasures garnered during forty 
years of sovereignty. 

And now they were all given away. The chief 
kept back nothing, except some cases of oriental 
fabrics that had been saved from the wreck when 
Wallulah’s mother was cast upon the shore. Well 
would it have been for him and his race had they 
been given too; for, little as they dreamed it, the 
fate of the Willamettes lay sealed up in those un- 
opened cases of silk and damask. 


THE MARRIAGE AND THE BREAKING UP. 245 

Again and again the slaves of Multnomah added 
their burdens to the heaps, and went back for more, 
till a murmur of wonder rose among the crowd. His 
riches seemed exhaustless. At length, however, all was 
brought. The chief stood up, and, opening his hands 
to them in the Indian gesture for giving, said, — 
There is all that was Multnomah’s ; it is yours ; 
your hands are full now and mine are empty.” 

The chiefs and warriors rose up gravely and went 
among the heaps of treasure; each selecting from 
furs and skins, arms and hiagua shells, that which he 
desired. There was no unseemly haste or snatching ; 
a quiet decorum prevailed among them. The women 
and children were excluded from sharing in these 
gifts, but provisions — dried meats and berries, and 
bread of camas or Wappatto root — were thrown 
among them on the outskirts of the crowd where 
they were gathered. And unlike the men, they 
scrambled for it like hungry animals ; save where here 
and there the wife or daughter of a chief stood looking 
disdainfully on the food and those who snatched at it. 

Such giving of gifts, or potlatches^ are still known 
among the Indians. On Puget Sound and the Okan- 
ogan, one occasionally hears of some rich Indian 
making a great potlatch^ — giving away all his pos- 
sessions, and gaining nothing but a reputation for 
disdain of wealth, a reputation which only Indian 
stoicism would crave. Multnomah’s object was not 
that so much as to make, before the dispersal of the 
tribes, a last and most favorable impression. 

When the presents were all divided, the chiefs re- 
sumed their places to hear the last speech of Multno- 
mah, — the speech that closed the council. 


246 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

It was a masterpiece of dignity, subtility, and com- 
mand. The prophecy of Tohomish was evaded, the 
fall of the Bridge wrested into an omen propitious to 
the Willamettes ; and at last his hearers found them- 
selves believing as he wished them to believe, without 
knowing how or why, so strongly did the overmaster- 
ing personality of Multnomah penetrate and sway 
their lesser natures. He particularly dwelt on the 
idea that they were all knit together now and were as 
one race. Yet through the smooth words ran a latent 
threat, a covert warning of the result of any revolt 
against his authority based on what plotting dreamers 
might say of the fall of the Bridge, — a half-expressed 
menace, like the gleam of a sword half drawn from 
the scabbard. And he closed by announcing that 
ere another spring the young men of all the tribes 
would go on the war-path against the Shoshones and 
come back loaded with spoil. And so, kindling the 
hatred of the chiefs against the common enemy, 
Multnomah closed the great council. 

In a little while the camp was all astir with prepa- 
ration for departure. Lodges were being taken down, 
the mats that covered them rolled up and packed 
on the backs of horses; all was bustle and tumult. 
Troop after troop crossed the river and took the trail 
toward the upper Columbia. 

But when the bands passed from under the personal 
influence of Multnomah, they talked of the ominous 
things that had just happened; they said to each 
other that the Great Spirit had forsaken the Wil- 
lamettes, and that when they came into the valley 
again it would be to plunder and to slay. Multnomah 
had stayed the tide but for a moment. The fall of 


THE MARRIAGE AND THE BREAKING UP, 247 

the ancient tomanowos of the Willamettes had a tre- 
mendous significance to the restless tributaries, and 
already the confederacy of the Wauna was crumbling 
like a rope of sand. Those tribes would meet no 
more in peace on the island of council. 


248 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS, 


CHAPTER III. 

AT THE CASCADES. 


Wails on the wind, fades out the sunset quite, 

And in my heart and on the earth is night. 

Philip Bourke Marston. 

T he main body of Snoqualmie’s followers crossed 
to the north bank of the Columbia and took 
the trail leading up the river toward the inland prai- 
ries. But Snoqualmie and Wallulah went by canoe as 
far as the now ruined Bridge of the Gods. There 
were three canoes in their train. Snoqualmie and 
Wallulah occupied the first ; the other two were laden 
with the rich things that had once made her lodge so 
beautiful. It stood all bare and deserted now, the 
splendor stripped from its rough bark walls even as 
love and hope had been reft from the heart of its 
mistress. Tapestries, divans, carpets, mirrors, were 
heaped in the canoes like spoil torn from the enemy. 

The farewell between Wallulah and her father had 
been sorrowful. It was remembered afterward, by 
those who were witnesses of it, that the war-chief had 
shown a tenderness unusual with him, that he had 
seemed reluctant to part with his daughter, and that 
she had clung to him, pale and tearful, as if he were 
her last hope on earth. 

When Snoqualmie took her hand to lead her away, 
she shuddered, withdrew her fingers from his clasp, 


AT THE CASCADES. 249 

and walked alone to the canoe. He entered after 
her; the canoe-men dipped their paddles into the 
water, and the vessel glided away from the island. 

She sat reclining on a heap of furs, her elbows 
sunk in them, her cheek resting on her hand, her 
eyes turned back toward her island home. Between 
it and her the expanse of waters grew ever broader, 
and the trail the canoe left behind it sparkled in a 
thousand silvery ripples. The island, with its green 
prairies and its stately woods, receded fast. She felt 
as she looked back as if everything was slipping away 
from her. Lonely as her life had been before Cecil 
came into it, she had still had her music and her 
beautiful rooms in the bark lodge ; and they seemed 
infinitely sweet and precious now as she recalled them. 
Oh, if she could only have them back again ! And 
those interviews with Cecil. How love and grief 
shook the little figure as she thought ! How loath- 
ingly she shrunk from the presence of the barbarian 
at her side ! And all the time the island receded 
farther and farther in the distance, and the canoe 
glided forward like a merciless fate bearing her on 
and on toward the savagery of the inland desert. 

Snoqualmie sat watching her with glittering, trium- 
phant eyes. To him she was no more than some 
lovely animal of which he had become the owner ; 
and ownership of course brought with it the right to 
tantalize and to torture. A malicious smile crossed 
his lips as he saw how sorrowfully her gaze rested on 
her old home. 

Look forward,” he said, not back ; look forward 
to your life with Snoqualmie and to the lodge that 
awaits you in the land of the Cayuses.” 


250 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


She started, and her face flushed painfully; then 
without looking at him she replied, — 

Wallulah loves her home, and leaving it saddens 
her.” 

A sparkle of vindictive delight came into his eyes. 
Do the women of the Willamette feel sad when 
they go to live with their husbands? It is not so 
with the Cayuse women. They are glad ; they care for 
the one they belong to. They love to sit in the sun 
at the door of the wigwam and say to the other 
women, * My man is brave ; he leads the war party ; 
he has many scalps at his belt. Who is brave like 
my man?’” 

Wallulah shuddered. He saw it, and the sparkle of 
malice in his eyes flashed into sudden anger. 

** Does the young squaw tremble at these things ? 
Then she must get used to them. She must learn to 
bring wood and water for Snoqualmie’s lodge, too. 
She must learn to wait on him as an Indian’s wife 
ought. The old wrinkled squaws, who are good for 
nothing but to be beasts of burden, shall teach her.” 

There came before her a picture of the ancient 
withered hags, the burden-bearers, the human vam- 
pires of the Indian camps, the vile in word and 
deed, the first to cry for the blood of captives, the 
most eager to give taunts and blows to the helpless ; 
were they to be her associates, her teachers ? Invol- 
untarily she lifted her hand, as if to push from her a 
future so dreadful. 

** Wallulah will bring the wood and the water. 
Wallulah will work. The old women need not teach 
her.” 

“That is well. But one thing more you must 


AT. THE CASCADES. 


251 


learn ; and that is to hold up your head and not look 
like a drooping captive. Smile, laugh, be gay. Sno- 
qualmie will have no clouded face, no bent head in 
his lodge.” 

She looked at him imploringly. The huge form, 
the swarthy face, seemed to dominate her, to crush 
her down with their barbarian strength and ferocity. 
She dropped her eyes again, and lay there on the 
furs like some frightened bird shrinking from the 
glance of a hawk. 

** I will work ; I will bear burdens,” she repeated, 
in a trembling tone. But I cannot smile and laugh 
when my heart is heavy.” 

He watched her with a half angry, half malicious 
regard, a regard that seemed ruthlessly probing into 
every secret of her nature. 

She knew somehow that he was aware of her love 
for Cecil, and she dreaded lest he should taunt her 
with it. Anything but that. He knew it, and held 
it back as his last and most cruel blow. Over his 
bronzed face flitted no expression of pity. She was 
to him like some delicate wounded creature of the 
forest, that it was a pleasure to torture. So he had 
often treated a maimed bird or fawn, — tantalizing it, 
delighted by its fluttering and its pain, till the lust 
of torture was gratified and the death-blow was 
given. 

He sat regarding her with a sneering, malicious 
look for a little while ; then he said, — 

It is hard to smile on Snoqualmie ; but the white 
man whom you met in the wood, it was not so with 
him. It was easy to smile and look glad at him, but 
it is hard to do so for Snoqualmie.” 


252 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

Wallulah shrunk as if he had struck her a blow ; 
then she looked at him desperately, pleadingly. 

Do not say such cruel things. I will be a faith- 
ful wife to you. I will never see the white man 
again.” 

The sneering malice in his eyes gave way to the 
gleam of exultant anger. 

Faithful ! You knew you were to be my woman 
when you let him put his arms around you and say 
soft things to you. Faithful ! You would leave 
Snoqualmie for him now, could it be so. But you 
say well that you will never see him again.” 

She gazed at him in terror. 

“ What do you mean ? Has anything happened to 
him? Have they harmed him?” 

Over the chiefs face came the murderous expres- 
sion that was there when he slew the Bannock war- 
rior at the torture stake. 

Harmed him ! Do you think that he could meet 
you alone and say sweet things to you and caress 
you, — you who were the same as my squaw, — and I 
not harm him? He is dead; I slew him.” 

False though it was, in so far as Snoqualmie claimed 
to have himself slain Cecil, it was thoroughly in keep- 
ing with Indian character. White captives were often 
told, ‘‘ I killed your brother,” or, This is your hus- 
band’s scalp,” when perhaps the person spoken of 
was alive and well. 

“ Dead ! ” 

He threw his tomahawk at her feet. 

His blood is on it. You are Snoqualmie ’s squaw ; 
wash it off.” 

Dead, dead, her lover was dead ! That was all she 


AT THE CASCADES. 


253 


could grasp. Snoqualmie’s insulting command passed 
unheeded. She sat looking at the Indian with bright, 
dazed eyes that saw nothing. All the world seemed 
blotted out. 

I tell you that he is dead, and I slew him. Are 
you asleep that you stare at me so? Awaken and 
do as I bid you; wash your lover’s blood off my 
tomahawk.” 

At first she had been stunned by the terrible shock, 
and she could realize only that Cecil was dead. Now 
it came to her, dimly at first, then like a flash of fire, 
that Snoqualmie had slain him. All her spirit leaped 
up in uncontrollable hatred. For once, she was the 
war-chiefs daughter. She drew her skirts away from 
the tomahawk in unutterable horror ; her eyes blazed 
into Snoqualmie’s a defiance and scorn before which 
his own sunk for the instant. 

You killed him ! I hate you. I will never be 
your wife. You have thrown the tomahawk between 
us ; it shall be between us forever. Murderer ! You 
have killed the one I love. Yes, I loved him ; and I 
hate you and will hate you till I die.” 

The passion in her voice thrilled even the canoe- 
men, and their paddle strokes fell confusedly for an 
instant, though they did not understand; for both 
Wallulah and Snoqualmie had spoken in the royal 
tongue of the Willamettes. He sat abashed for an 
instant, taken utterly by surprise. 

Then the wild impulse of defiance passed, and 
the awful sense of bereavement came back like the 
falling of darkness over a sinking flame. Cecil was 
gone from her, gone for all time. The world seemed 
unreal, empty. She sunk among the furs like one 


254 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


stricken down. Snoqualmie, recovering from his mo- 
mentary rebuff, heaped bitter epithets and scornful 
words upon her; but she neither saw nor heard, 
and lay with wide, bright, staring eyes. Her seem- 
ing indifference maddened him still more, and he 
hurled at her the fiercest abuse. She looked at him 
vaguely. He saw that she did not even know what 
he was saying, and relapsed into sullen silence. She 
lay mute and still, with a strained expression of pain 
in her eyes. The canoe sped swiftly on. 

One desolating thought repeated itself again and 
again, — the thought of hopeless and irreparable loss. 
By it past and present were blotted out. By and 
by, when she awoke from the stupor of despair and 
realized her future, destined to be passed with the 
murderer of her lover, what then? But now she was 
stunned with the shock of a grief that was mercy 
compared with the awakening that must come. 

They were in the heart of the Cascade Mountains, 
and a low deep roar began to reach their ears, rousing 
and startling all but Wallulah. It was the sound of 
the cascades, of the new cataract formed by the fall 
of the Great Bridge. Rounding a bend in the river 
they came in sight of it. The mighty arch, the long 
low mountain of stone, had fallen in, damming up the 
waters of the Columbia, which were pouring over the 
sunken mass in an ever-increasing volume. Above, 
the river, raised by the enormous dam, had spread 
out like a lake, almost submerging the trees that still 
stood along the former bank. Below the new falls 
the river was comparatively shallow, its rocky bed 
half exposed by the sudden stoppage of the waters. 

The Indians gazed with superstitious awe on the 


AT THE CASCADES. 


255 


vast barrier over which the white and foaming waters 
were pouring. The unwonted roar of the falls, a roar 
that seemed to increase every moment as the swell- 
ing waters rushed over the rocks; the sight of the 
wreck of the mysterious bridge, foreshadowing the 
direst calamities, — all this awed the wild children 
of the desert. They approached the falls slowly and 
cautiously. 

A brief command from Snoqualmie, and they landed 
on the northern side of the river, not far from the foot 
of the falls. There they must disembark, and the 
canoes be carried around the falls on the shoulders 
of Indians and launched above. 

The roar of the Cascades roused Wallulah from her 
stupor. She stepped ashore and looked in dazed 
wonder on the strange new world around her. Sno- 
qualmie told her briefly that she must walk up the 
bank to the place where the canoe was to be launched 
again above the falls. She listened mutely, and started 
to go. But the way was steep and rocky ; the bank 
was strewn with the debris of the ruined bridge ; and 
she was unused to such exertion. Snoqualmie saw 
her stumble and almost fall. It moved him to a 
sudden and unwonted pity, and he sprang forward to 
help her. She pushed his hand from her as if it had 
been the touch of a serpent, and went on alone. His 
eyes flashed : for all this the reckoning should come, 
and soon ; woe unto her when it came. 

The rough rocks bruised her delicately shod feet, 
the steep ascent took away her breath. Again and 
again she felt as if she must fall ; but the bitter scorn 
and loathing that Snoqualmie ’s touch had kindled gave 
her strength, and at last she completed the ascent. 


256 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


Above the falls and close to them, she sat down 
upon a rock ; a slight, drooping figure, whose dejected 
pose told of a broken heart. 

Before her, almost at her feet, the pent-up river was 
widened to a vast flood. Here and there a half- 
submerged pine lifted its crown above it ; the surface 
was ruffled by the wind, and white-crested waves 
were rolling among the green tree-tops. She looked 
with indifference upon the scene. She had not 
heard that the Bridge had fallen, and was, of course, 
ignorant of these new cascades; and they did not 
impress her as being strange. 

Her whole life was broken up ; all the world ap- 
peared shattered by the blow that had fallen on her, 
and nothing could startle her now. She felt dimly 
that some stupendous catastrophe had taken place ; 
yet it did not appear unnatural. A strange sense of 
unreality possessed her; everything seemed an illu- 
sion, as if she were a shadow in a land of shadows. 
The thought came to her that she was dead, and 
that her spirit was passing over the dim ghost trail to 
the shadow-land. She tried to shake off the fancy, 
but all was so vague and dreamlike that she hardly 
knew where or what she was ; yet over it all brooded 
the consciousness of dull, heavy, torturing pain, like 
the dumb agony that comes to us in fevered sleep, 
burdening our dreams with a black oppressing weight 
of horror. 

Her hand, hanging listlessly at her side, touched 
her flute, which was still suspended from her belt by 
the golden chain. She raised it to her lips, but only 
a faint inharmonious note came from it. The music 
seemed gone from the flute, as hope was gone from 


AT THE CASCADES. 


257 


her heart. To her overwrought nerves, it was the 
last omen of all. The flute dropped from her fin- 
gers ; she covered her face with her hands, and the 
hot tears coursed slowly down her cheeks. 

Some one spoke to her, not ungently, and she 
looked up. One of the canoe-men stood beside her. 
He pointed to the canoe, now launched near by. 
Snoqualmie was still below, at the foot of the falls, 
superintending the removal of the other. 

Slowly and wearily she entered the waiting canoe 
and resumed her seat. The Indian paddlers took 
their places. They told her that the chief Snoqual- 
mie had bidden them take her on without him. He 
would follow in the other canoe. It was a relief to 
be free from his presence, if only for a little while ; 
and the sadness on her face lightened for a moment 
when they told her. 

A few quick paddle-strokes, and the boat shot out 
into the current above the cascades and then glided 
forward. No, not forward. The canoe-men, unfa- 
miliar with the new cataract, had launched their vessel 
too close to the falls; and the mighty current was 
drawing it back. A cry of horror burst from their 
lips as they realized their danger, and their paddles 
were dashed into the water with frenzied violence. 
The canoe hung quivering through all its slender 
length between the desperate strokes that impelled 
it forward and the tremendous suction that drew it 
down. Had they been closer to the bank, they might 
have saved themselves ; but they were too far out in 
the current. They felt the canoe slipping back in 
spite of their frantic efforts, slowly at first, then more 
swiftly ; and they knew there was no hope. 

17 


2 $8 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

The paddles fell from their hands. One boatman 
leaped from the canoe with the desperate idea of 
swimming ashore, but the current instantly swept him 
under and out of sight; the other sat motionless in 
his place, awaiting the end with Indian stolidity. 

The canoe was swept like a leaf to the verge of the 
fall and downward into a gulf of mist and spray. As 
it trembled on the edge of the cataract, and its hor- 
rors opened beneath her, Wallulah realized her doom 
for the first time ; and in the moment she realized it, 
it was upon her. There was a quick terror, a dream- 
like glimpse of white plunging waters, a deafening 
roar, a sudden terrible shock as the canoe was splin- 
tered on the rocks at the foot of the fall ; then all 
things were swallowed up in blackness, a blackness 
that was death. 

Below the falls, strong swimmers, leaping into the 
water, brought the dead to land. Beneath a pine- 
tree that grew close by the great Columbia trail and 
not far from the falls, the bodies were laid. The 
daughter of Multnomah lay in rude state upon a fawn- 
skin; while at her feet were extended the brawny 
forms of the two canoe-men who had died with her, 
and who, according to Indian mythology, were to be 
her slaves in the Land of the Hereafter. Her face 
was very lovely, but its mournfulness remained. Her 
flute, broken in the shock that had killed her, was 
still attached to her belt. The Indians had placed 
her hand at her side, resting upon the flute ; and 
they noticed in superstitious wonder that the cold 
fingers seemed to half close around it, as if they 
would clasp it lovingly, even in death. Indian 
women knelt beside her, fanning her face with fra- 


AT THE CASCADES. 


259 


grant boughs of pine. Troop after troop, returning 
over the trail to their homes, stopped to hear the 
tale, and to gaze at the dead face that was so wonder- 
fully beautiful yet so sad. 

All day long the bands gathered; each stopping, 
none passing indifferently by. At length, when even- 
ing came and the shadow of the wood fell long and 
cool, the burials began. A shallow grave was scooped 
at Wallulah’s feet for the bodies of the two canoe- 
men. Then chiefs — for they only might bury Mult- 
nomah’s daughter — entombed her in a cairn ; being 
Upper Columbia Indians, they buried her, after the 
manner of their people, under a heap of stone. Rocks 
and bowlders were built around and over her body, 
yet without touching it, until the sad dead face was 
shut out from view. And still the stones were piled 
above her; higher and higher rose the great rock- 
heap, till a mighty cairn marked the last resting-place 
of Wallulah. And all the time the women lifted the 
death-wail, and Snoqualmie stood looking on with 
folded arms and sullen baffled brow. At length the 
work was done. The wail ceased ; the gathering 
broke up, and the sachems and their bands rode away, 
Snoqualmie and his troop departing with them. 

Only the roar of the cascades broke the silence, as 
night fell on the wild forest and the lonely river. 
The pine-tree beside the trail swayed its branches in 
the wind with a low soft murmur, as if lulling the 
sorrow-worn sleeper beneath it into still deeper re- 
pose. And she lay very still in the great cairn, — 
the sweet and beautiful dead, — with the grim warriors 
stretched at her feet, stern guardians of a slumber 
never to be broken. 


26 o 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


CHAPTER IV. 

MULTNOMAH'S DEATH-CANOE. 

Gazing alone 
To him are wild shadows shown, 

Deep under deep unknown. 

Dante Rossetti. 

T F Multnomah was grieved at his daughter’s death, 
if his heart sunk at the unforeseen and terrible 
blow that left his empire without an heir and with- 
ered all his hopes, no one knew it ; no eye beheld 
his woe. Silent he had ever been, and he was silent 
to the last. The grand, strong face only grew grander, 
stronger, as the shadows darkened around him ; the 
unconquerable will only grew the fiercer and the more 
unflinching. But ere the moon that shone first on 
Wallulah’s new-made cairn had rounded to the full, 
there was that upon him before which even his will 
bowed and gave way, — death, swift and mysterious. 
And it came in this wise. 

We have told how at the great potlatch he gave 
away his all, even to the bear-skins from his couch, re- 
serving only those cases of Asiatic textures never yet 
opened, — all that now remained of the richly laden 
ship of the Orient wrecked long ago upon his coast. 
They were opened now. His bed was covered with 
the magnificent fabrics ; they were thrown carelessly 
over the rude walls and seats, half-trailing on the 


MULTNOMAFVS DEATH-CANOE. 


261 


floor ; exquisite folds of velvet and damask swept the 
leaves and dust, — so that all men might see how rich 
the chief still was, though he had given away so much. 
And with his ostentation was mixed a secret pride 
and tenderness that his dead wife had indirectly 
given him this wealth. The war-chiefs woman had 
brought him these treasures out of the sea ; and now 
that he had given away his all, even to the bare poles 
of his lodge, she filled it with fine things and made 
him rich again, — she who had been sleeping for 
years in the death-hut on mimaluse island. Those 
treasures, ere the vessel that carried them was 
wrecked, had been sent as a present from one ori- 
ental prince to another. Could it be that they had 
been purposely impregnated with disease, so that 
while the prince that sent them seemed to bestow a 
graceful gift, he was in reality taking a treacherous 
and terrible revenge? Such things were not infre- 
quent in Asiatic history; and even the history of 
Europe, in the middle ages, tells us of poisoned 
masks, of gloves and scarfs charged with disease. 

Certain it is that shortly after the cases were 
opened, a strange and fatal disease broke out among 
Multnomah’s attendants. The howling of medicine- 
men rang all day long in the royal lodge ; each day 
saw swathed corpses borne out to the funeral pyre 
or mhnaluse island. And no concoction of herbs, — 
however skilfully compounded with stone mortar 
and pestle, — no incantation of medicine-men or 
steaming atmosphere of sweat-house, could stay the 
mortality. 

At length Multnomah caught the disease. It seemed 
strange to the Indians that the war-chief should sicken. 


262 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

that Multnomah should show any of the weaknesses of 
common flesh and blood ; yet so it was. But while 
the body yielded to the inroad of disease, the spirit 
that for almost half a century had bent beneath it the 
tribes of the Wauna never faltered. He lay for days 
upon his couch, his system wasting with the plague, 
his veins burning with fever, holding death off only by 
might of will. He touched no remedies, for he felt 
them to be useless; he refused the incantations of 
the medicine-men; alone and in his own strength 
the war-chief contended with his last enemy. 

All over the Willamette Valley, through camp and 
fishery, ran the whisper that Multnomah was dying ; 
and the hearts of the Indians sunk within them. Be- 
yond the mountains the whisper passed to the allied 
tribes, once more ripe for revolt, and the news rang 
among them like a trumpet call ; it was of itself a 
signal for rebellion. The fall of the magic Bridge, the 
death of Wallulah, and the fatal illness of Multnomah 
had sealed the doom of the Willamettes. The chiefs 
stayed their followers only till they knew that he was 
dead. But the grand old war-chief seemed deter- 
mined that he would not die. He struggled with 
disease ; he crushed down his sufferings ; he fought 
death with the same silent, indomitable tenacity with 
which he had overthrown the obstacles of life. 

In all his wasting agony he was the war-chief still, 
and held his subjects in his grip. To the tribes that 
were about to rebel he sent messages, short, abrupt, 
but terrible in their threat of vengeance, — messages 
that shook and awed the chiefs and pushed back 
invasion. To the last, the great chief overawed the 
tribes ; the generation that had grown up under the 


MULTNOMAH'S DEATH-CANOE. 263 


shadow of his tyranny, even when they knew he was 
dying, still obeyed him. 

At length, one summer evening a few weeks after 
the burial of Wallulah, there burst forth from the war- 
chief’s lodge that peculiar wail which was lifted only 
for the death of one of the royal blood. No need to 
ask who it was, for only one remained of the ancient 
line that had so long ruled the Willamettes ; and for 
him, the last of his race, was the wail lifted. It was 
re-echoed by the inmates of the surrounding lodges ; 
it rang, foreboding, mournful, through the encampment 
on Wappatto Island. 

Soon, runners were seen departing in every direc- 
tion to bear the fatal news throughout the valley. 
Twilight fell on them ; the stars came out ; the moon 
rose and sunk ; but the runners sped on, from camp 
to camp, from village to village. Wherever there was 
a cluster of Willamette lodges, by forest, river, or sea, 
the tale was told, the wail was lifted. So all that night 
the death- wail passed through the valley of the Willa- 
mette ; and in the morning the trails were thronged 
with bands of Indians journeying for the last time to 
the isle of council, to attend the obsequies of their 
chief, and consult as to the choice of one to take his 
place. 

The pestilence that had so ravaged the household 
of Multnomah was spread widely now ; and every 
band as it departed from the camp left death behind 
it, — aye, took death with it ; for in each company 
were those whose haggard, sickly faces told of disease, 
and in more than one were those so weakened that 
they lagged behind and fell at last beside the trail to 
die. 


264 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

The weather was very murky. It was one of the 
smoky summers of Oregon, like that of the mem 
orable year 1849, when the smoke of wide-spread 
forest fires hung dense and blinding over Western 
Oregon for days, and it seemed to the white settlers 
as if they were never to breathe the clear air or see 
the sky again. But even that, the historic ‘‘smoky 
time ” of the white pioneers, was scarcely equal to the 
smoky period of more than a century and a half be- 
fore. The forest fires were raging with unusual fury ; 
Mount Hood was still in course of eruption ; and all 
the valley was wrapped in settled cloud Through 
the thick atmosphere the tall firs loomed like spectres, 
while the far-off roar of flames in the forest and the in- 
termittent sounds of the volcano came weirdly to the 
Indians as they passed on their mournful way. What 
wonder that the distant sounds seemed to them wild 
voices in the air, prophecying woe ; and objects in the 
forest, half seen through the smoke, grotesque forms 
attending them as they marched ! And when the 
bands had all gathered on the island, the shuddering 
Indians told of dim and shadowy phantoms that had 
followed and preceded them all the way; and of 
gigantic shapes in the likeness of men that had 
loomed through the smoke, warning them back with 
outstretched arms. Ominous and unknown cries had 
come to them through the gloom ; and the spirits of 
the dead had seemed to marshal them on their way, 
or to oppose their coming, — they knew not which. 

So, all day long, troop after troop crossed the river 
to the island, emerging like shadows from the smoke 
that seemed to wrap the world, — each with its sickly 
faces, showing the terrible spread of the pestilence ; 



ULTOMAH^ S Death-ca?ioe. 




y *■ V*. 




"’ft., 


* , 


# 


















>■' 


i.’t't ■! 


♦j ^ 


iV-'-MS-r 


J ‘ ' •'.J 

nl #«» * 


^ I 


i V '*•. j*- 
' . « — u 

• f** I ' 1^ 




.1 






'e: 


■4'-‘^ 






I 


”1 . 

(: 










' ♦* 


r^V 


■*■ ' lilP-'V. * * ♦ ■ ' ‘ 




id 


Mm 




V -?w ? V 


f * 








i. • 


:» 




/)>/ ,.‘i 

- 






- 






..V' •>. 


' r 


P' 


,\r 


4» 


'-V‘ 






f ; : ; .' ■ ■ 




■t.i 




..V 


.■M' • 

■Ni. 


£tI 






f'^V. 




M. 





i 'T^>v^’*VA 


; , .\.' H ... — ^ A ■’ t 

' •VrW- ;h'.--?J . 

, ' .-_.s 

, - 7^^/ * • tr » i* 

' ' ;, W“^ ,^te'; i’^^r ^ t’ ‘ I 



A 


r> a1 ^ 






•A • 









4 •• '^- • * ^ 





-■ • I »■ 


arf. 




'It iSttfi'i-r'* / V - 







-ii: sV^. 




‘ i* 




4. < 




• t^.', 'i 

j • . • ■• f .v:“*. 


• .•■\ 'V • » . ^ ■:* 

*1* Mt. . Uk' tJ.. 




? - 




MULTNOMAWS DEATH-CANOE. 265 

each helping to swell the great horror that brooded 
over all, with its tale of the sick and dead at home, 
and the wild things seen on the way. Band after band 
the tribes gathered, and when the sun went down the 
war-chiefs obsequies took place. 

It was a strange funeral that they gave Multnomah, 
yet it was in keeping with the dark, grand life he had 
lived. 

A large canoe was filled with pitch and with pine- 
knots, — the most inflammable materials an Oregon 
forest could furnish. Upon them was heaped all that 
was left of the chiefs riches, all the silks and velvets 
that remained of the cargo of the shipwrecked vessel 
lost upon the coast long before. And finally, upon 
the splendid heap of textures, upon the laces and the 
damasks of the East, was laid the dead body of Mult- 
nomah, dressed in buckskin; his moccasins on his 
feet, his tomahawk and his pipe by his side, as be- 
came a chief starting on his last journey. 

Then as night came on, and the smoky air dark- 
ened into deepest gloom, the canoe was taken out 
into the main current of the Columbia, and fire was 
set to the dry knots that made up the funeral pyre. 
In an instant the contents of the canoe were in a 
blaze, and it was set adrift in the current. Down the 
river it floated, lighting the night with leaping flames. 
On the shore, the assembled tribe watched it in si- 
lence, mute, dejected, as they saw their great chief 
borne from them forever. Promontory and dusky 
fir, gleaming water and level beach, were brought into 
startling relief against the background of night, as the 
burning vessel neared them ; then sank into shadow as 
it passed onward. Overhead, the playing tongues of 


266 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


fire reddened the smoke that hung dense over the 
water, and made it assume distorted and fantastic 
shapes, which moved and writhed in the wavering 
light, and to the Indians seemed spectres of the dead, 
hovering over the canoe, reaching out their arms to 
receive the soul of Multnomah. 

** It is the dead people come for him,” the Willa- 
mettes whispered to one another, as they stood upon 
the bank, watching the canoe drift farther and farther 
from them, with the wild play of light and shadow 
over it. Down the river, like some giant torch that 
was to light the war-chief along the shadowy ways 
of death, passed the burning canoe. Rounding a 
wooded point, it blazed a moment brilliantly beside 
it, and as it drifted to the farther side, outlined the 
intervening trees with fire, till every branch was 
clearly relieved against a flaming background ; then, 
passing slowly on beyond the point, the light waned 
gradually, and at last faded quite away. 

And not till then was a sound heard among the 
silent and impassive throng on the river-bank. But 
when the burning canoe had vanished utterly, when 
black and starless night fell again on wood and water, 
the death-wail burst from the Indians with one im- 
pulse and one voice, — a people’s cry for its lost 
chief, a great tribe’s lament for the strength and glory 
that had drifted from it, never to return. 

Among a superstitious race, every fact becomes 
mingled more or less with fable ; every occurrence, 
charged with fantastic meanings. And there sprang 
up among the Indians, no one could tell how, a pro- 
phecy that some night when the Willamettes were 


MULTNOMAirs DEATH-CANOE. 26 J 

in their direst need, a great light would be seen 
moving on the waters of the Columbia, and the war- 
chief would come back in a canoe of fire to lead 
them to victory as of old. 

Dire and awful grew their need as the days went 
on ; swift and sweeping was the end. Long did the 
few survivors of his race watch and wait for his re- 
turn, — but never more came back Multnomah to 
his own. 


268 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


CHAPTER V. 

AS WAS WRIT IN THE BOOK OF FATE. 

A land of old upheaven from the abyss 
By fire, to sink into the abyss again, 

Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt. 


Tennyson, 


ND now our tale draws to a close. There re- 



mains but to tell how the last council was held 
on Wappatto Island ; how Mishlah the Cougar, chief 
of the Mollalies, died ; and how the prophecy of the 
Bridge was fulfilled. 

The morning after the obsequies of Multnomah, 
the chiefs met in the grove where the great council 
of the tribes had been held only a few weeks before. 
The leaves, which had been green and glossy then, 
were turning yellow and sickly now in the close hot 
weather. All Nature seemed full of decay. 

The chiefs were grouped before the vacant seat of 
Multnomah ; and the Willamette tribe, gathered from 
canyon and prairie and fishery, looked on, sole spec- 
tators of the proceedings, — for none of the allies 
were present. The ravages of the pestilence had been 
terrible. Many warriors were missing from the spec- 
tators; many chiefs were absent from the council. 
And there were some present from whom the others 
shrunk away, whose hot breath and livid faces showed 


AS WAS WRIT IN THE BOOK OF FATE. 269 

that they too were stricken with the plague. There 
were emaciated Indians among the audience, whose 
gaunt forms and hollow eyes told that they had 
dragged themselves to the council-grove to die. The 
wailing of the women at the camp, lamenting those just 
dead ; the howling of the medicine- men in the dis- 
tance, performing their incantations over the sick ; the 
mysterious sounds that came from the burning forest 
and the volcano, — all these were heard. Round 
the council the smoke folded thick and dark, veiling 
the sun, and shutting out the light of heaven and 
the mercy of the Great Spirit. 

The chiefs sat long in silence, each waiting for 
the other to speak. At length arose a stately war- 
rior famous among the Willamettes for wisdom and 
prudence. 

‘‘We perish,” said the chief, “ we melt away before 
the breath of the pestilence, like snow before the 
breath of the warm spring wind. And while we die 
of disease in our lodges, war gathers against us be- 
yond the ranges. Even now the bands of our en- 
emies may be descending the mountains, and the 
tomahawk may smite what the disease has spared. 
What is to be done? What say the wise chiefs of 
the Willamettes ? Multnomah’s seat is empty : shall 
we choose another war-chief? ” 

A pale and ghastly chief rose to reply. It was 
evident that he was in the last extremity of disease. 

“Shall we choose another war-chief to sit in 
Multnomah’s place? We may; but will he be Mult- 
nomah ? The glory of the Willamettes is dead ! 
Talk no more of war, when our war- strength is gone 
from us. The Bridge is fallen, the Great Spirit is 


2^o THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

against us. Let those who are to live talk of war. 
It is time for us to learn how to die.” 

He sunk flushed and exhausted upon the ground. 
Then rose an aged chief, so old that it seemed as if 
a century of time had passed over him. His hair 
was a dirty gray, his eyes dull and sunken, his 
face withered. He supported himself with tremulous 
bony hands upon his staff. His voice was feeble, and 
seemed like an echo from the long-perished past. 

I am old, the oldest of all the Willamettes. I 
have seen so many winters that no man can count 
them. I knew Multnomah’s father. I went forth to 
battle with his father’s father; and even before that 
I knew others, warriors of a forgotten time. Or do 
I dream? I know not. The weight of the time 
that I have lived is very heavy, and my mind sinks 
under it. My form is bowed with the burden of 
winters. Warriors, I have seen many councils, many 
troubles, but never a trouble like this. Of what use 
is your council? Can the words of wise men stay 
disease? Can the edge of the tomahawk turn back 
sickness? Can you fight against the Great Spirit? 
He sent the white man to tell us of our sins and 
warn us to be better, and you closed your ears and 
would not listen. Nay, you would have slain him 
had not the Great Spirit taken him away. These 
things would not have come upon us had you listened 
to the white shaman. You have offended the Great 
Spirit, and he has broken the Bridge and sent disease 
upon us ; and all that your wisdom may devise can 
avail naught to stay his wrath. You can but cover 
your faces in silence, and die.” 

For a moment the council was very still. The 


AS WAS WRIT IN THE BOOK OF FA TE. 271 

memory of the white wanderer, his strong and tender 
eloquence, his fearless denunciation, his loving and 
passionate appeal, was on them all. JVas the Great 
Spirit angry with them because they had rejected 
him? 

‘‘Who talks of dying?” said a fierce warrior, start- 
ing to his feet. “Leave that to women and sick 
men ! Shall we stay here to perish while life is yet 
strong within us? The valley is shadowed with 
death ; the air is disease ; an awful sickness wastes 
the people ; our enemies rush in upon us. Shall we 
then lie down like dogs and wait for death? No. 
Let us leave this land ; let us take our women and chil- 
dren, and fly. Let us seek a new home beyond the 
Klamath and the Shasta, in the South Land, where 
the sun is always warm, and the grass is always green, 
and the cold never comes. The spirits are against 
us here, and to stay is to perish. Let us seek a new 
home, where the spirits are not angry ; even as our 
fathers in the time that is far back left their old home 
in the ice country of the Nootkas and came hither. 
I have spoken.” 

His daring words kindled a moment’s animation in 
the despondent audience ; then the ceaseless wailing 
of the women and the panting of the sick chiefs in 
the council filled the silence, and their hearts sank 
within them again. 

“My brother is brave,” said the grave chief who 
had opened the council, “but are his words wise? 
Many of our warriors are dead, many are sick, and 
Multnomah is gone. The Willamettes are weak ; it 
is bitter to the lips to say it, but it is true. Our en- 
emies are strong. All the tribes who were once with 


272 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


US are against us. The passes are kept by many 
warriors ; and could we fight our way through them 
to another land, the sickness would go with us. Why 
fly from the disease here, to die with it in some far-off 
land? ” 

We cannot leave our own land,” said a dreamer, 
or medicine-man. <‘The Great Spirit gave it to us, 
the bones of our fathers are in it. It is our land,” 
he repeated with touching emphasis. ^‘The Wil- 
lamette cannot leave his old home, though the world 
is breaking up all around him. The bones of our 
people are here. Our brothers lie in the death-huts 
on mimaluse island ; — how can we leave them ? 
Here is the place where we must live ; here, if death 
comes, must we die ! ” 

A murmur of assent came from the listeners. It 
voiced the decision of the council. With stubborn 
Indian fatalism, they would await the end; fighting 
the rebels if attacked, and sullenly facing the disease 
if unmolested. Now a voice was heard that never 
had been heard in accents of despair, — a voice that 
was still fierce and warlike in its resentment of the 
course the council was taking. It was the voice of 
Mishlah the Cougar, chief of the Mollalies. He, too, 
had the plague, and had just reached the grove, 
walking with slow and tottering steps, unlike the 
Mishlah of other days. But his eyes glittered with all 
the old ferocity that had given him the name of 
Cougar. Alas, he was but a dying cougar now. 

Shall we stay here to die? ” thundered the wild 
chief, as he stood leaning on his stick, his sunken eyes 
sweeping the assembly with a glance of fire. Shall 
we stand and tremble till the pestilence slays us all 


AS IVAS WRIT IN THE BOOK OF FATE. 273 

with its arrows, even as a herd of deer, driven into a 
deep gulch and surrounded, stand till they are shot 
down by the hunters ? Shall we stay in our lodges, 
and die without lifting a hand? Shall disease burn 
out the life of our warriors, when they might fall in 
battle? No! Let us slay the women and children, 
cross the mountains, and die fighting the rebels ! Is 
it not better to fall in battle like warriors than to 
perish of disease like dogs?” 

The chief looked from face to face, but saw no re- 
sponsive flash in the eyes that met his own. The 
settled apathy of despair was on every countenance. 
Then the medicine-man answered, — 

“ You could never cross the mountains, even if we 
did this thing. Your breath is hot with disease ; the 
mark of death is on your face ; the snake of the pesti- 
lence has bitten you. If we went out to battle, you 
would fall by the wayside to die. Your time is short. 
To-day you die.” 

The grim Mollalie met the speaker’s glance, and 
for a moment wavered. He felt within himself that 
the words were true, that the plague had sapped his 
life, that his hour was near at hand. Then his hesi- 
tation passed, and he lifted his head with scornful 
defiance. 

So be it 1 Mishlah accepts his doom. Come, you 
that were once the warriors of Multnomah, but whose 
hearts are become the hearts of women ; come and 
learn from a Mollalie how to die ! ” 

Again his glance swept the circle of chiefs as if 
summoning them to follow him, — then, with weak and 
staggering footsteps, he left the grove ; and it was as if 
the last hope of the Willamettes went with him. The 
18 


2 74 the bridge of the gods. 

dense atmosphere of smoke soon shut his form from 
view. Silence fell on the council. The hearts of 
the Indians were dead within them. Amid their por- 
tentous surroundings, — the appalling signs of the 
wrath of the Great Spirit, — the fatal apathy which is 
the curse of their race crept over them. 

Then rose the medicine-man, wild priest of a 
wild and debasing superstition, reverenced as one 
through whom the dead spoke to the living. 

‘‘ Break up your council ! ” he said with fearful look 
and gesture. Councils are for those who expect to 
live ! and you ! — the dead call you to them. Choose 
no chief, for who will be left for him to rule? You 
talk of plans for the future. Would you know what 
that future will be? I will show you; listen ! ” He 
flung up his hand as if imposing silence ; and, taken 
by surprise, they listened eagerly, expecting to hear 
some supernatural voice or message prophetic of the 
future. On their strained hearing fell only the 
labored breathing of the sick chiefs in the council, 
the ominous muttering of the far-off volcano, and 
loud and shrill above all the desolate cry of the 
women wailing their dead. 

You hear it ? That death- wail tells all the future 
holds for you. Before yonder red shadow of a sun 
— pointing to the sun, which shone dimly through 
the smoke — shall set, the bravest of the Mollalies 
will be dead. Before the moon wanes to its close, the 
Willamette race will have passed away. Think you 
Multnomah’s seat is empty? The Pestilence sits in 
Multnomah’s place, and you will all wither in his hot 
and poisonous breath. Break up your council. Go 
to your lodges. The sun of the Willamettes is set, 


AS WAS WRIT IN THE BOOK OF FA TE. 275 

and the night is upon us. Our wars are done ; our 
glory is ended. We are but a tale that old men tell 
around the camp-fire, a handful of red dust gathered 
from mimaluse island, — dust that once was man. 
Go, you that are as the dead leaves of autumn ; go, 
whirled into everlasting darkness before the wind 
of the wrath of the Great Spirit ! ” 

He flung out his arms with a wild gesture, as if he 
held all their lives and threw them forth like dead 
leaves to be scattered upon the winds. Then he 
turned away and left the grove. The crowd of war- 
riors who had been looking on broke up and went 
away, and the chiefs began to leave the council, each 
muffled in his blanket. The grave and stately sachem 
who had opened the council tried for a little while to 
stay the fatal breaking up, but in vain. And when he 
saw that he could do nothing, he too left the grove, 
wrapped in stoical pride, sullenly resigned to what- 
ever was to come. 

And so the last council ended, in hopeless apathy, 
in stubborn indecision, — indecision in everything 
save the recognition that a doom was on them against 
which it was useless to struggle. 

And Mishlah? He returned to his lodge, painted 
his face as if he were going to battle, and then went 
out to a grove near the place where the war-dances of 
the tribe were held. His braves followed him ; others 
joined them ; all watched eagerly, knowing that the 
end was close at hand, and wondering how he would 
die. 

He laid aside his blanket, exposing his stripped 
body ; and with his eagle plume in his hair and his 
stone tomahawk in his hand, began to dance the war- 


276 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 

dance of his tribe and to chant the song of the battles 
he had fought. 

At first his utterance was broken and indistinct, his 
step feeble. But as he went on his voice rang clearer 
and stronger ; his step grew quicker and firmer. Half 
reciting, half chanting, he continued the wild tale of 
blood, dancing faster and faster, haranguing louder and 
louder, until he became a flame of barbaric excitement, 
until he leaped and whirled in the very madness of 
raging passion, — the Indian war- frenzy. 

But it could not last long. His breath came quick 
and short ; his words grew inarticulate ; his eyes 
gleamed like coals of fire ; his feet faltered in the 
dance. With a final effort he brandished and flung 
his tomahawk, uttering as he did so a last war-cry, 
which thrilled all who heard it as of old when he led 
them in battle. The tomahawk sunk to the head in 
a neighboring tree, the handle breaking off short with 
the violence of the shock ; and the chief fell back — 
dead. 

Thus passed the soul of the fierce Mollalie. For 
years afterward, the tomahawk remained where it had* 
sunk in the tree, sole monument of Mishlah. His 
bones lay unburied beneath, wasted by wind and rain, 
till there was left only a narrow strip of red earth, with 
the grass springing rankly around it, to show where 
the body had been. And the few survivors of the 
tribe who lingered in the valley were wont to point 
to the tomahawk imbedded in the tree, and tell the 
tale of the warrior and how he died. 

Why dwell longer on scenes so terrible ? Besides, 
there is but little more to tell. The faithless allies 
made a raid on the valley ; but the shrouding atmo- 


AS WAS WJ^/T m THE BOOK OF FATE. 277 

sphere of smoke and the frightful rumors they heard 
of the great plague appalled them, and they retreated. 
The pestilence protected the Willamettes. The Black 
Death that the medicine-men saw sitting in Multno- 
mah’s place turned back the tide of invasion better 
than the war-chief himself could have done. 

Through the hot months of summer the mortality 
continued. The valley was swept as with the besom 
of destruction, and the drama of a people’s death was 
enacted with a thousand variations of horror. When 
spring came, the invaders entered the valley once 
more. They found it deserted, with the exception 
of a few wretched bands, sole survivors of a mighty 
race. They rode through villages where the decaying 
mats hung in tatters from the half-bare skeleton-like 
wigwam poles, where the ashes had been cold for 
months at the camp-fires; they rode by fisheries 
where spear and net were rotting beside the canoe 
upon the beach. And the dead — the dead lay every- 
where : in the lodges, beside the fisheries, along the 
trail where they had been stricken down while try- 
irg to escape, — everywhere were the ghastly and 
repulsive forms. 

The spirit of the few survivors was broken, and 
they made little resistance to the invaders. Mongrel 
bands from the interior and the coast settled in the 
valley after the lapse of years ; and, mixing with the 
surviving Willamettes, produced the degenerate race 
our own pioneers found there at their coming. These 
hybrids were, within the memory of the white man, 
overrun and conquered by the Yakimas, who sub- 
jugated all the Indians upon Wappatto Island and 
around the mouth of the Willamette in the early 


278 


THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. 


part of the present century. Later on, the Yakimas 
were driven back by the whites ; so that there have 
been three conquests of .the lower Willamette Valley 
since the fall of the ancient race, — two Indian 
conquests before the white. 

The once musical language of the Willamettes has 
degenerated into the uncouth Chinook, and the blood 
of the ancient race flows mixed and debased in the 
veins of abject and squalid descendants; but the 
story of the mighty bridge that once spanned the 
Columbia at the Cascades is still told by the Oregon 
Indians. Mingled with much of fable, overlaid with 
myth and superstition, it is nevertheless one of the 
historic legends of the Columbia, and as such will 
never be forgotten. 

One word more of Cecil Gray, and our tale is done. 

The Shoshone renegade, who resolved at Cecil’s 
death to become a Christian, found his way with a 
few followers to the Flat-Heads, and settled among 
that tribe. He told them of what he had learned 
from Cecil, — of the Way of Peace ; and the wise 
men of the tribe pondered his sayings in their hearts. 
The Shoshone lived and died among them ; but from 
generation to generation the tradition of the white 
man’s God was handed down, till in 1832 four Flat- 
Heads were sent by the tribe to St. Louis, to ask that 
teachers be given them to tell them about God. 

Every student of history knows how that appeal 
stirred the heart of the East, and caused the sending 
out of the first missionaries to Oregon ; and from the 
movement then inaugurated have since sprung all the 
missions to the Indians of the West. 


AS WAS WRIT IN THE BOOK OF FA TE. 2 79 

Thus he who gave his life for the Indians, and died 
seemingly in vain, sowed seed that sprung up and 
bore a harvest long after his death. And to-day, two 
centuries since his body was laid in the lonely grave 
on Wappatto Island, thousands of Indians are the 
better for his having lived. No true, noble life can be 
said to have been lived in vain. Defeated and beaten 
though it may seem to have been, there has gone 
out from it an influence for the better that has helped 
in some degree to lighten the great heartache and 
bitterness of the world. Truth, goodness, and self- 
sacrifice are never beaten, — no, not by death itself. 
The example and the influence of such things is 
deathless, and lives after the individual is gone, 
flowing on forever in the broad life of humanity. 

I write these last lines on Sauvie’s Island — the 
Wappatto of the Indians, — sitting upon the bank of 
the river, beneath the gnarled and ancient cotton- 
wood that still marks the spot where the old Columbia 
trail led up from the water to the interior of the island. 
Stately and beautiful are the far snow-peaks and the 
sweeping forests. The woods are rich in the colors 
of an Oregon autumn. The white wappatto blooms 
along the marshes, its roots ungathered, the dusky 
hands that once reaped the harvest long crumbled 
into dust. Blue and majestic in the sunlight flows 
the Columbia, river of many names, — the Wauna 
and Wemath of the Indians, the St. Roque of the 
Spaniards, the Oregon of poetry, — always vast and 
grand, always flowing placidly to the sea. Steam- 
boats of the present ; batteaux of the fur traders ; 
ships, Grey’s and Vancouver’s, of discovery; Indian 




280 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. . 

canoes of the old unknown time, — the stately nver 
has seen them all come and go, and yet holds its 
way past forest and promontory, still beautiful and un- 
changing. Generation after generation, daring hunter, 
ardent discoverer, silent Indian, — all the shadowy 
peoples of the past have sailed its waters as we sail 
them, have lived perplexed and haunted by mystery 
as we live, have gone out into the Great Darkness 
with hearts full of wistful doubt and questioning, as we 
go ; and still the river holds its course, bright, beauti- 
ful, inscrutable. It stays ; we go. Is there anything 
beyond the darkness into which generation follows 
generation and race follows race ? Surely there is an 
after-life, where light and peace shall come to all 
who, however defeated, have tried to be true and 
loyal j where the burden shall be lifted and the heart- 
ache shall cease ; where all the love and hope that 
slipped away from us here shall be given back to 
us again, and given back forever. 




Via crucis, via lucis. 


THE END. 






















